Word: wildness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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AMMAN, Jordan: Palace intrigue worthy of Shakespeare has rendered the Mideast's most stable country something of a wild card. Jordan's King Hussein on Monday removed his brother Hassan as his successor to the throne; named his 37-year-old son Abdullah as crown prince; and then immediately flew back to the U.S. for further cancer treatment. "Jordan suddenly has an acting head of state who wasn't even in contention for the crown a week ago, and this creates a measure of uncertainty," says TIME Middle East bureau chief Scott MacLeod. "Not that there's any reason...
...residents slid helplessly and angrily through their daily tasks. So by the time 600 arrived for the funeral at Refuge Temple Church of God, on Main Street, it seemed as though God had forgotten this place, a small city with big-city problems. "Violence is let loose like a wild boar on our streets!" thundered the Rev. Courtney Williams, a phalanx of fellow ministers behind him hollering agreement, along with worshippers who sobbed and shouted. "There's an insatiable appetite for blood...the blood of our princes... Don't let Prince Leroy's death go in vain...
...Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and later laid the roots for the CIA was obsessed with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" of espionage. These days the Net, which has already remade such mundane pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan's vocation as well...
Much of the problem here is our cognitive machinery for gauging risk. Human beings evolved in societies of 40, 50, maybe 100 people. In those groups, if you saw a mother sobbing that her child had been carried off by a wild animal, it meant your child faced a real risk. So, apparently, the human brain evolved to take such reports seriously. But today Americans live in a society of 250 million people. If you turn on the TV and see a mother sobbing that her child has been abducted, it means nothing of statistical significance. Still, you instinctively...
John Laroche is a serial monomaniac who learns everything about Ice Age fossils; then chucks fossils for orchids, becomes a celebrated breeder, then a thief of wild orchids; and finally turns his back on the plant world and its obsessed hobbyists and dives into computers. As he explains to the author of this loose-jointed but absorbing account, "When I was a baby I probably got exposed to something that mutated me, and now I'm incredibly smart." Writer Orlean, at any rate, is a superb tour guide through the loony subculture of Florida's orchid fanciers, and a writer...