Asia Adrift

America Adrift

All right, turn her adrift.

It could have been adrift.

I'll cast you adrift sir.

Pass me adrift at the mercy of savage Indians?

Last time I was adrift, a sea anchor held us up 48 hours in a storm.

There's a piece in here about some people who were adrift in a lifeboat for 80 days.

Now, if you want to understand what happened then when the continents broke apart, and dinosaurs found landlubbers, as they are found themselves adrift. There's some missing puzzle pieces.

The International Search and Rescue Satellite System (COSPAS SARSAT) was able to receive distress signals and transmit location details of downed aircraft and ships that had capsized or gone adrift to the nearest of an international network of rescue centres.

The Ibrox side were looking to record their first win on the road since February's 4 1 triumph at St Johnstone, but Gary Holt's team inflicted just Gerrard's second defeat in 18 games as manager to leave his side eight points adrift of runaway Ladbrokes Premiership leaders Hearts.

Militarily, this argument does make sense. Politically and psychologically, however, the method, let alone the timing and implementation of the withdrawals, raises many questions about the ongoing viability of the US Korean security alliance, for the alliance now seems adrift, without a common purpose and with little direction from either side.

In the US, polarized politics, gerrymandered Congressional districts, and a constitution that seems to check more than it balances, have obstructed reforms and left the country seemingly adrift in choppy waters. The middle class is being hollowed out, and failed overseas adventures have discouraged the once indispensable nation from bearing the burden of global leadership.

Imagine you're a shipwrecked sailor adrift in the enormous Pacific. You can choose one of three directions and save yourself and your shipmates but each choice comes with a fearful consequence too. How do you choose? In telling the story of the whaleship Essex, novelist Karen Thompson Walker shows how fear propels imagination, as it forces us to imagine the possible futures and how to cope with them.

As I argue in my recent book Mind, Modernity, Madness, the reason for high concentrations of severe mental illness in the developed West lies in the very nature of Western societies. The virus of depression and schizophrenia, including their milder forms, is cultural in origin the embarrassment of choices that these societies offer in terms of self definition and personal identity leaves many of their members disoriented and adrift.