Word: sapping
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...ROAD Aside from tourism, Pagan's main industry is the confection of jaggery, or palm sugar. Hundreds of small palm plantations crowd the Pagan Plain, each tended by a family that taps its livelihood from high up in the fronds. The thin, sweet sap is boiled down in large vats to make a dark, flavorful sugar sold at roadside stands. But for the real treat, look beyond the woven palm baskets filled with the golden lumps for the flask bottles of potent palm toddy?the sap that is collected in the afternoon, after fermenting all day in the sun. Unrefined...
...routine can also sap the life out of a team. When a lineup lacks fire and urgency—when opponents are able to make it through nine innings without breaking a sweat in the field—games drag on without the promise of the late-inning rally that is always theoretically possible in the absence of a clock. Games go on until they’re done, not until they’ve become something. Hit the field, play the game, maybe win, go home. Routine...
...like most people, you know that a sleepless night can sap your energy and turn your brain into mush. So it may be hard to fathom how anyone could complain about having too much sleep. And yet that's the predicament faced by the estimated 200,000 Americans who suffer from a condition called narcolepsy. They don't generally fall asleep in the middle of a meal or a conversation--that happens in movies and television sitcoms. But they struggle with an overwhelming sense of drowsiness they can't shake--even after a good night's rest...
Anyway, the original's achievement had nothing to do with craft, subtlety or writing; it was all about blending humor, sports and unabashed sap to make guys unembarrassed to sob, at the precipice of the sensitive '70s. (A year later, football star Rosie Grier sang It's All Right to Cry in the seminal children's album Free to Be You and Me.) Brian's Song was wholly of its time, when football was a rising competitor to baseball, when the civil-rights struggle was fresh in the public mind, when men were redefining manhood...
...Forward Spin: While it would be a mistake to underestimate the strengths of players like Siebel and i2, information technology market research firm IDC says SAP's main competition going forward will be from the software industry's heaviest hitters. Microsoft bought Great Plains, an enterprise-application software company, in December 2000 and is expected to target part of SAP's traditional customer base. While IBM isn't talking about its plans, it is expected to make a defensive play, and Oracle is putting more of its efforts into corporate software applications, SAP's core strength...