Word: terrain
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...under way. Psychologists are wary of speculating about specific causes in the Jonesboro killings--violence at home? A history of serious mental disturbance?--until a fuller picture emerges of the two boys and their circumstances. But on the question of how the larger ground is prepared, meaning the psychological terrain that might make a kid capable of killing, the professionals share the assumptions of most parents. These days Mom and Dad are not always home much. The extended family of the past is gone. A feckless popular culture has moved into the vacuum...
...starting to slump and slide. And the reason, say experts, is simple. Weeks of relentless rain have saturated not just the top few inches of soil but also underlying layers of bedrock, causing structural weakening deep down. By itself, waterlogged ground is a nuisance. Combined with California's mountainous terrain, says Doug Morton of the U.S. Geological Survey in Riverside, Calif., it can very quickly add up to disaster. Imagine living on the edge of a steep, quivering pile of chocolate pudding. "Mother Nature doesn't like steep slopes," says Morton, "and she does what she can to lower them...
...eerie sensation to read Jane Smiley's prankish new novel, set in pre-Civil War Kansas, after campaigning with the fiery abolitionist John Brown through the same time and terrain in Russell Banks' thunderous epic Cloudsplitter. The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (Knopf; 448 pages; $26) follows Lidie, a sturdy young Illinois bride, to the dust-blown outpost of Lawrence, Kans., in the tumultuous year of 1855. Lawrence is a raw, ill-favored roost of newly arrived Free Soil settlers, jostled by drunken proslave irregulars from Missouri and protected, mostly with words, by gassy politicians. John Brown...
...time lawmen arrived in Murphy, however, Rudolph had stopped at the local grocery to stock up on raisins, trail mix and eight packs of flashlight batteries. Then, apparently on foot, he vanished, leading more than 100 federal agents and local officers on a manhunt across rugged terrain right out of the best-selling novel Cold Mountain. Agents of the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms armed themselves with semiautomatic rifles and bulletproof vests as they searched Rudolph's trailer and poked cautiously under neighbors' porches and in their barns. Helicopters clattered overhead, using infrared scanners that...
...veteran EA-6B pilot told TIME he was in no rush to blame his colleagues. The plane, he says, is complicated to fly and, unlike some military aircraft, has no automatic terrain-following features. On a low-level run, the plane is flying at nearly 500 m.p.h. "At that speed," he notes, "after a minute you're six miles off course." By week's end Italian authorities were insisting the plane was up to six miles outside the approved flight corridor. Marine officials agree the plane was too low, and some wonder if it was trying to fly under...