Word: aura
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...Inca civilization, writes Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, was a "pyramidal and theocratic society" of "totalitarian structure" in which "the individual had no importance and virtually no existence." Its foundation? "A state religion that took away the individual's free will and crowned the authority's decision with the aura of a divine mandate turned the Tawantinsuyu ((Incan empire)) into a beehive...
...such a computer network and charged that the plan was really designed to scuttle the Brady bill. "The stranglehold of the N.R.A. on Congress is now broken," crowed Representative Charles E. Schumer, ; a New York Democrat and a co-sponsor of the waiting-period bill. "They had this aura of invincibility . . . and they were beaten...
...kind of museum, if you half-close your eyes. The Gagosian Gallery, perhaps because its ascent from selling posters on the West Coast to flogging $10 million De Koonings has been so short and steep, goes to great lengths to surround its wares with the aura of a museum rather than that of a shop. It has even hired a guard to stand at the entrance to the room in which Salle's six new paintings are displayed, presumably in case some collector from the bottom of the waiting list is seized by the impulse to grab one of these...
...concrete slabs, monuments to the bottom-line obsessions that created multipurpose stadiums equally antiseptic for baseball, football or rock concerts. In 1989 the Skydome in Toronto found a way to exaggerate this folly to Herculean proportions. Boasting a hotel overlooking center field, a Hard Rock Cafe and the aura of high-tech razzmatazz, the Skydome became a monument to itself, with baseball reduced to a minor sideline...
This year's game does not put the Ivy title on the line, an undefeated record, an NCAA tourney first-round bye--or even an NCAA tourney first-round bid. But it is Harvard-Yale, and that immediately lends the game an aura of significance...