Word: wood
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...like it that the wood and mud-brick houses of towns have yet to become drab, concrete cities, that the villagers have not traded their packhorses for personal cars, that food is still cooked in hot pots over live, burning coals, that the women still wear their brightly colored headdresses and ethnic dress. Perhaps even the fact that I cannot access the latest international newspapers has been therapeutic for this would-be journalist...
...termite species known to science. Formosan termites can chew their way through beams and plywood nine times as fast as their more laid-back cousins. Their colonies are huge, housing up to 10 million insects. They nest underground, in trees, in walls--just about anywhere there's wood and water. And they're on the move: long confined in the continental U.S. mostly to Louisiana and a handful of other coastal areas, Formosan termites are now happily chewing their way through real estate in 14 states, from Virginia to Hawaii, and causing property damage to the tune of about...
FEMININE MYSTIQUE As part of the 26th Annual Moose Dropping Festival July 11-12 in Talkeetna, Alaska, 15 women will compete in the Mountain Mother Contest, in which they must cross the Susitna River on stepping-stones while carrying two bags of groceries and a baby doll, then chop wood, change diapers and make a whipped-cream pie. Unofficial record time: under 5 min. Losers can always try their luck at the Moose Nugget Toss...
...house holds 11,000 volumes, which fill nearly every room. Dark wood bookcases line the walls of Longfellow's study, and even one of the windows was converted into shelving...
...where's the fire? According to archaeologists writing in the journal Science Friday, it's not in the caves of Zhoudoudian, China. What was previously thought to be a 500,000-year-old fireplace there turns out to lack the tell-tale traces of wood ash. That leaves us with no evidence that our distant ancestor Homo Erectus had any idea how to set the world alight. Which is a problem, because Homo Erectus is supposed to have been busy colonizing the coldest climes of Asia back then. How on earth did he do it without a way to keep...