Word: amazonian
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Para is one of Brazil's most resource-rich states, part of the country's immense Amazonian region. It is, however, also one of Brazil's most violent states. In 2008 alone, 13 people were assassinated because of their involvement in land reform issues. It is a disturbing counterindicator to all of the talk of Brazil being a 21st-century economic role model at the forefront of the newly developed coterie of nations. (Why Brazil is the one country that might avoid recession...
...name has become a synonym for bad luck. But malevolence may be at the origin as well. Fernando Farro, a local farmer, says Quince Mil takes its name from the amount of money the Peruvian government gave Russian fortune-seekers at the turn of the 20th century to eliminate Amazonian tribes and open the area for sugar plantations. And that darker explanation may be more relevant now as more and more attention is being paid to the backwater town...
Which is why the future of books won't be purely Amazonian. It's not an either/or future. It's both/and. It will have publishers and self-publishers and books and Kindles and probably other devices in it too. The rise of a new model doesn't require the death of the old one. In fairy-tale terms, Princess Alera won't have to choose between the politically expedient Steldor and the mysteriously alluring Narian. She can have them both and live happily ever after. Or if not happily, at least she'll have plenty to read...
...parents urged him to study medicine, Jimmy Weiskopf dropped out of college and in the 1970s moved to Colombia, where he eventually began to focus on a different kind of elixir. The New York City native became an early advocate for the hallucinogenic plant mixture ayahuasca. For centuries, Amazonian Indians have been drinking ayahuasca, also known as yaje - a combination of the ayahuasca vine, tree bark and other plants - to achieve a trancelike state that they believe cleanses body and mind and enables communication with spirits. Weiskopf, who has published a 688-page tome about ayahuasca, was once among...
...Because it contains the hallucinogenic alkaloid dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, drinking ayahuasca in the U.S. is illegal. But traditional use of the plant potion is permitted in much of South America. Its mecca is the Peruvian city of Iquitos, which hosts the annual International Amazonian Shamanism Conference and is home to about a dozen lodges that cater to curious foreigners. At first, local residents feared that a flood of stoned beatniks would turn Iquitos into an unruly rain-forest Woodstock. "I thought they'd be from the hippie graveyard, with tattoos and sunken faces," says Gerald Mayeaux, a Houston native...