Word: spasms
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...civil war in Iraq, the fear is of an escalation of the current insurgency into a much bigger war. Analysts may have in mind something like the U.S. Civil War, with Sunni and Shi'ite armies fighting each other across well-defined fronts. Or they may imagine a sudden spasm of massive communal conflict and ethnic cleansing along the lines of Bosnia or Rwanda. Neither scenario is all that likely, although bouts of violent ethnic cleansing are certainly possible in a few parts of the country, especially Kirkuk...
...Hanley looks over the sheet.It’s the moment before performance, so it’s the actor’s last moment of anonymity. “Okay, I want you to do it again. This time, I’m going to give you a spasm. Your leg,” Hanley says. Making the auditioning actor incorporate a nervous tic into her monologue is one of Hanley’s trademark moves, to see how well the actors respond to direction. Although most of the casting decisions come down to intangible factors like...
...intangible factors like "presence" and the actor’s particular "fit" for "Chicago," Hanley relies on formulaic tests, like giving actors a nervous tic, to evaluate the auditioners. "Okay, I want you to do it again. This time, I’m going to give you a spasm," Hanley says to another auditioning actor...
Most geophysicists don't believe sufficient stress has accumulated along this section of the fault to power another 1857-style spasm. That one approached a magnitude of 7.9, making it even stronger than the 1906 quake that devastated San Francisco. Still, experts acknowledge, it's not inconceivable that the next moderately strong shake-up at Parkfield could lead to the unzipping of a longer section of the fault, spawning a quake of, say, magnitude 7. If that happens, SAFOD would provide scientists with more than they bargained for--a near ringside seat at the start...
...scenes of terrorist carnage unfolded in Vienna and Rome, a spasm of racial violence shattered seasonal hopes of peace and goodwill across South Africa. For the country's whites, all signs appeared to point to a new and ominous phase of killing, one that seemed to bear out recent warnings by the outlawed African National Congress (A.N.C.) that "soft" targets--meaning unarmed civilians, including whites--would no longer be off limits. Nonetheless, blacks suffered the brunt of the year-end violence. At least five people died in the township of Soweto, as militants fought with migrant workers who refused...