Word: begat
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Competing with him for such devilish distinction is Lenin, who snatched from obscurity the 19th century ideology of communism and devised the modern tools of totalitarian brutality. He begat not only Stalin and Mao but in some ways also Hitler, who was enchanted by the Soviets' terror tactics. Doesn't the presence of such evil--and the continued eruption of totalitarian brutality from Uganda to Kosovo--make a mockery of the rationalists' faith that progress makes civilizations more civilized? Isn't Hitler, alas, the person who most influenced and symbolized this most genocidal of centuries...
...that it was possible to outthink the enemy. Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt urging the making of a uranium bomb, and soon a coterie of can-do intellectuals convened at Los Alamos to become the new cowboys of war machinery. Presidents have relied on eggheads ever since: Einstein begat Kissinger begat Rubin, Reich and Greenspan...
...Gandhi is not even a member of Parliament. Her chief qualification? Choice of spouse. Her late husband was Rajiv Gandhi, slain Prime Minister, himself the most recent example of India's experiment in monarchical rule within a democratic shell. The line is almost unbroken. The first Prime Minister (Nehru) begat a Prime Minister (daughter Indira) who begat another (son Rajiv). His children being too young to reign, India's Congress Party is proposing what in the Middle Ages was called a regency: let the widow rule...
...there's now only one species of human on the planet, and in the simplified view of evolution most of us have, that's all there has ever been. A few million years ago, most of us think, the half-ape known as Lucy appeared in Africa; eventually she begat a less apelike creature, who evolved in turn into something even more humanlike. Finally, after a few more begettings, Homo sapiens appeared. Except for that odd side branch known as the Neanderthals, the path from proto-apes to modern humans is commonly seen as a succession of new and improved...
...Indeed, Episode I uses its legacy as a crutch. In the midst of an eye-popping "pod race" scene on Tatooine, just as the action promises to run away with the audience, Lucas dribbles in gratuitous allusions to the action-figure world he begat in his youth: Jawas cheer "Utidi!" and sand people fire on the racers like juvenile delinquents. Jabba the Hutt rolls out to preside over the race, as if Lucas' faith in his audience did not extend beyond their vulgar appreciation for references to the previous movies...