Word: benignantly
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...assume that Case, Levin, Ted Turner and Bob Pittman are the benign presences they appear to be. The problem has to do with putting the structure in place now for what will certainly happen later. It has to do with what media critic Ben Bagdikian prophesied more than a decade ago: that fewer and fewer corporations would come to dominate the media environment, resulting in the free-enterprise equivalent of a Ministry of Culture. It has to do with mega-communications conglomerates that are already bigger than the economies of countries whose monopolistic information policies we condemn as a violation...
...saying we should be paying $30,000 a year so we can regress back to the third grade. Still, there might be some room in our incredibly regimented lives for some unstructured pursuits. At MIT, for example, students regularly apply their engineering savvy toward benign, anonymous pranks. Recognizing these "hacks" as a valuable creative outlet, the administration often looks the other way, tacitly encouraging the practice. At Princeton and Cornell, it is common for students to flood en masse into the streets on weekends, simply to congregate and engage in spontaneous activity. In contrast, a professor who lives on Harvard...
However, the most indirect, though by no means benign, gift of the Khan was the plague. Originating in the jungles of southern China and Burma, bubonic plague traveled with Mongol armies and then from caravan to caravan till it reached the Crimea in 1347. From there it would take a third of all Europeans. Bereft of labor and talent, the fledgling nation states were pressed to maximize tax collection, bureaucracy and state control of the force of arms, leading to the heightened competitiveness of the West just as Europe's ships sailed for the riches of a distant empire...
...main reason for the absence of a serious challenge to American hegemony is that it is so benign. It does not extract tribute. It does not seek military occupation. It is not interested in acquiring territory--indeed, it specializes in giving it up, as shown in the Philippines and Panama. Economically, the world has prospered under the open trading system the U.S. supports. And culturally, America is a hit. Arnold is a universal icon. Latvians like their Levi's. And everyone loves McDonald...
...gone south; a cocky kid (Foxx) who needs some life lessons before he can step into the starter's shoes. The up-to-date spin on this tale is provided by the tough and scheming owner (Diaz), who has inherited the team, the Miami Sharks, from her more benign father and wreaks a certain amount of nontraditional havoc before she gets some sort of comeuppance...