Free Republic

It's totally fine to use 'decimate' as a synonym for 'devastate'. This is why. The issue that many people have with the decline and fall of the word decimate is that is once upon a time it had a very singular meaning, a meaning that is in danger of being lost forever to the vandals and barbarian hordes who are manhandling the English language through using this word to mean “to destroy a large number of.” The specific complaint is that decimate had the specific meaning, in ancient Rome, of killing one of every ten soldiers, as a form of...

Limited nuclear war would decimate ozone layer 22:00 07 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic Apart from the human devastation, a small-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan would destroy much of the ozone layer, leaving the DNA of humans and other organisms at risk of damage from the Sun's rays, say researchers. Michael Mills of the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and colleagues used computer models to study how 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would affect the atmosphere. They say that their scenario – in which each country launches 50 devices of 15 kilotons – is realistic, given the...

Did humans decimate Easter Island on arrival? 19:00 09 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes Early settlers to the remote Easter Island stripped the island’s natural resources to erect towering stone statues (Image: Terry L Hunt)The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival. Easter Island has often been cited as the classic example of a human-induced ecological catastrophe. The island – one of the most remote places on Earth – was...

Islamic terrorism may eventually be defeated in its large manifestations, like the one we saw on 9/11, but built into earliest Islam is an ultimate goal of religious world domoination, whether carried out by violent or peaceful means, as seen in the Quran, the Hadith (the record of the deeds and sayings of Muhammad), and the sunna (the example or path of Muhammad). Osama bin Laden and Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who beheads innocent workers in Iraq, are open about this goal, as we see in these fatwas, statements, and interviews before and after 9/11.