Word: roughneck
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...called the Cultural Revolution, but the decade-long upheaval that ended in 1976 with Mao Tse-tung's death was a time of sorrow and hardship for China's scholars. Roughneck Red Guards took over classroom and campus; universities were shut down. Academic standards sank to scandalously low levels. Eminent teachers and scientists were sent off to the countryside for "re-education," to work as farm hands and laborers. Science came virtually to a standstill...
...Willie is a roughneck with a poet's soul. When his dander isn't up he is courteous and softspoken, with some of the grave self-possession of the country man. His favorite reading is Kahlil Gibran and Edgar Cayce. Sitting around hotel rooms, he muses often on the theory of reincarnation and on karma as a sort of Newton's Third Law of the spirit ("Whatever goes around, comes around"). Willie is "irresistible to women," says a female member of his entourage, "because he's so sensitive along with being so masculine-like Shane." Willie...
...Chiefs of Staff have pieced together a composite of these alternatives and filtered it out to other analysts. The composite represents high-level rumination rather than a final, actual blueprint. But it is couched in considerable detail and shows a knowledge of up-to-date military tactics and a "roughneck's" expertise in oil production...
...Life here is all 'arse up and head down,' " says Crew Member Patrick Baron. Roughneck Leo Cariou, a veteran of 14 years in oilfields round the world, explains: "It's part adventure, part backbreaking toil, a big part loneliness. We are the adventurers of the energy business, and the oceans are our last frontier to exploit." That is a notion not often expressed here on the barge; the relentless search for oil affords time for little but the mind-numbing and muscle-aching work that grinds along in hopes of the big payoff...
...trouble began last November when antigovernment demonstrators, protesting the one-man rule of Prime Minister Eric Gairy, 51, and an unemployment rate of 50% or more, began marching through the streets of St. George's, the island's capital. Gairy's police, a roughneck band derisively called "the Mongoose" by opponents, retaliated by beating up opposition leaders. Their attacks culminated last month in "Bloody Monday," when the Prime Minister's bullyboys broke up a protest rally and killed the father of one of Gairy's chief critics. Since then they have been looting shops owned...