Word: abstractions
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...decide on some of the nation's most sensitive, sometimes most divisive issues. No reporter, no lobbyist, no aide, not even a messenger is allowed in the paneled conference room. The Justices are left alone to argue the law, their principles, their consciences. Theirs is not an abstract debate: comfortably hazy concepts like ''liberty'' and ''equality'' must be applied to urgent social and moral dilemmas-abortion, the death penalty, obscenity, busing, reverse discrimination. The conferences provide a relentless test of conviction and reason; shallowness and bluffing are not long concealed...
...errors and frustrations. "Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger," Glashow will say of his great mentor, "attacked the problem, but even he came away discouraged. There were too many mysteries." This was as recently as 1955, and at this time only a lonely few really believed that someone would prove this abstract theory...
...Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov was meant to dramatize the opera's message that an "antipeople government" is "inevitably" a criminal government. The composer believes that the score makes the point even more clearly than the Alexander Pushkin play on which the libretto is based. "For me, the abstract art-music-is more effective," he says...
...were divulged, the schism was apparently an ideological one: some institute members insisted that winners be confined to scientists engaged in basic research, while others felt that achievements in medical technology should also be considered. The choice of the CAT-scanner pioneers seemed a perfect compromise. Their work with abstract physics and mathematics resulted in a lifesaving machine...
...guiding patterns of Letters are like those abstract coffee-table sculptures that come apart into little pieces, then stand whole again only as a testimony to the dogged persistence of the party guest who sat there all night putting the damn thing back together again. You can play that game if you want to; stand in line for your Ph.D in Contemporary...