Word: variant
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...August 1918, the mild virus apparently reassorted into something positively deadly. Outbreaks caused by the new variant exploded almost simultaneously in three far-flung locations: France, Sierra Leone and Boston. The flu struck with a ferocity that shocked doctors, who feared this strange new pathogen might be an airborne version of the Black Death. Patients died awash in blood and gore, literally drowning as fluid filled their lungs...
...brave the Cambridge cobbled streets with sufficiently pneumatic tires may wonder. The retro-bike is a genre of used bike which is turning up with alarming frequency on campus. The most common strain--sorry, retro-bikers, it is becoming common--is the Raleigh frame in a rust-eaten variant of burnt umber, olive, electric blue or the ever-present black. The metallic frame comes over both the front and back wheels half-way and preferably, in the purest strains of retro-bike, has an irregularly shaped casing over the chain. Schwinns are also acceptable models...
...bandleader and keeps a mug full of pencils on his desk. In Argentina, Roberto Pettinato is host of Duro de Acostar (roughly translated, Sleep Hard, a play on Duro de Matar, the Spanish title for Die Hard), which features yet another bantering bandleader, city backdrop and, in a variant on Letterman's trademark, a nightly Top 5 list. Dan Borge Akero, host of Norway's RiksDan, used to do a Letterman-style Top 6 list, but dropped it in 1996 when he ran out of material. Peter Jan Rens, host of a Dutch show called Late Night, which debuted...
Portishead's groundbreaking debut album, Dummy (1994), along with producer-rapper Tricky's Maxinquaye (1995), helped define the nascent genre of trip-hop, an arty European variant of hip-hop characterized by dreamy lyrics and lounging, lulling song structures. Portishead is another stellar work. While Dummy's sound was sweetened with recognizable melodic flavors drawn from R. and B. and gospel, the new album is stranger, more unsettling, more sour. Vocalist Beth Gibbons' voice is distorted on many of the tracks, stretched thin and left floating high and parched over shards of melody and jagged bits of rhythm. One song...
...training class, she became the Air Force "showgirl," as she put it, the first woman ever to pilot a B-52, the one picked to fly the Air Force Secretary around on her visit to the base. Known as BUFF, for Big Ugly Flying Fellow (or a more colorful variant), the B-52 is the largest bomber in the Air Force, 488,000 lbs. of titanium, aluminum and steel, rigged with eight Pratt & Whitney engines and a 35-ton payload...