Word: amulet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...faith in flying saucers, the theory that H-bomb tests caused rain and that the test ban has since caused droughts. Even scientists are highly susceptible to superstitious beliefs. One California physicist who flies to Washington once a month eases his fear of a crash by carrying a special amulet: a copy of TIME, a magazine he otherwise dislikes...
...over the world, for instance, the new bestseller is suddenly Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, which JAMES F. COYNE comes encased in red plastic with a red-ribbon marker. At Berke ley, it is treated like an amulet by the Black Muslims; at Columbia, it is outselling everything since Henry Miller; and Bren-tano's at the Pentagon has already unloaded 1,000 copies at $1 each. A few of the buyers may be genuine sinologists, but for the vast majority it is the new camp classic...
...keep it in an amulet...
Laotian soldiers wear Buddhist necklaces into battle and often piously shoot to miss, but it is considered highly bad form to wear the amulet into a bordello. And though Vientiane's whisky-tippling set often honors Buddha's fourth rule more in spirits than in spirit, at least their chauffeurs use only the softest tail feathers of a rooster to dust the Mercedes-so as to avoid crushing the least ant, who could well be somebody's mother...
...Communists thought they had an invaluable tool. Politically unformed, the little captain was immensely popular with his troops and the Laotian people. In superstition-ridden Laos, Kong Le was believed invulnerable to gunfire. The bad, or cotton strings, he wore tied around his wrists and a stone amulet he carried in a pouch at his waist kept his 32 souls (one for each major part of the body) from fleeing. The phi or demon who guarded him was undoubtedly among the underworld's most powerful, for Kong Le had never been wounded...