Word: ardor
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Jiranan Phedsri confesses that she has "one true friend." The 51-year-old Thai housewife strokes the object of her affection, caressing its cool curves. The recipient of the devout Buddhist's ardor? A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol Jiranan carries wherever she goes in Thailand's troubled deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has resulted in roughly 4,000 deaths since it gained momentum in 2004. The handgun, though, isn't Jiranan's only trusted companion. As a volunteer in the Iron Ladies, an all-female civilian militia designed to protect Buddhists from Islamic extremists, she received military training...
Testament to the ardor of its fans and of the creative team behind it, the story is to be reiterated in wide release in a sequel, “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” which opens today—fittingly, the weekend of All Saints...
Death and resurrection. That's the scenario not just for gods but for pop stars who earn fans' ardor with an electrifying presence and their sympathy with very public private lives of addiction and misbehavior. The stars' talent makes them unique; their transgressions make them human. Michael Jackson, who died in June at age 50, outlived Edith Piaf and Judy Garland by three years, and Elvis by eight. (Forget Madonna - that woman is too smart to self-immolate.) Jackson's bizarre resculpting of his features, his litigious shenanigans with his youngest admirers, his obsession with being an eternal preadolescent...
Executives at Disney must know that its streak of luck with fresh faces can't last. For a start, there are not many genuine teen stars out there. Second, even tween girls - Disney Channel's main consumers - can generate ardor for only so many other humans. The company has recently made moves to find story lines and characters elsewhere, paying $4 billion to buy Marvel Entertainment merely to get access to some of its lesser superheroes. (The big ones, like Spider-Man, are already spoken for.) Comic-book characters can't give concerts or go to a meet-and-greet...
...desire to rekindle closer ties with their neighbors across the Rhine. Since the end of World War II the Franco-German relationship has been the motor of European integration, the driving force behind the creation of the European Union and, more recently, the introduction of the euro. But the ardor has cooled in this decade, particularly under Merkel, who has regularly struggled to conceal her irritation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy's grandstanding. Sarkozy, in turn, has often been impatient with what he considers Merkel's lack of resolve...