Word: complexity
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...nation's 15 internal security forces. His father had begun to prepare a hand-off, in what Martha Kessler, a recently retired CIA analyst, said was "one of the most carefully orchestrated transitions ever." But Assad wasn't finished. Are there anti-Bashar elements still squirreled away in Damascus' complex power structure? Will they strike? It was a legacy of Assad's opaque rule that even his son probably doesn't know if every threat has been eliminated...
...Close Shave (1995) were mini-epics starring Wallace, a staid, daft suburban bachelor inventor, and his brilliant, long-suffering dog Gromit. Park has now adapted to feature length his obsession with the forlorn wit of caged animals, with the quiet exasperation of rural English life, with complex machinery destined to go wrong--and with bead-eyed, lipless creatures who have more lower teeth (six or eight) than upper (four). These features give his characters a perpetually dazed expression, as if they've been beaten goofy by life's inequities and iniquities. Simply to keep going is an act of heroism...
...quantum computer, sometimes dubbed the ultimate computer. The idea is to direct a laser or radio beam on a carefully arranged collection of atomic nuclei, each of which is spinning like a top. As the beam bounces off the atoms, it flips the spins of some of them. Complex computations can be performed by analyzing how the spins have been flipped...
...engaged in diagnosing the perpetrator's state of mind, then we may need an infinitely more complex system of laws than what we have now. If we assign, say, 12 years' imprisonment for a crime motivated by hate, then we must presumably work out a calculus of penalties for crimes committed for reasons of jealousy, or of lust, or of compassion (the Kevorkian assist, e.g.). I would like to see an entire new branch of law developed to deal out sentences for crimes committed for reasons of sheer stupidity...
...must the thirtysomething opthalmologist bachelor muster the requisite skill, experience and - inevitably - ruthlessness to navigate the treacherous waters of Syria's domestic politics, he's also got to modernize an economically decrepit state squeezed between the Israel-Turkey alliance and the hostile regime in Iraq, while sustaining an increasingly complex policing role in neighboring Lebanon. "Bashar's key allies will be Iran and Saudi Arabia," says Hamad. "Iran provides the strategic counterweight to Israel, Turkey and the U.S., while Saudi Arabia ensures the flow of financial support from the Gulf States...