Word: benignity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...probability, this sort of relatively benign factionalism will be around for quite some time; no matter how peaceful and unified the country seems, there will always be amusing secession movements in Vermont and Texas and the militia party will always hold a respectable minority of the congressional seats in Montana...
Whether biting or benign, what these supposedly trenchant comebacks have in common is the roar of a phantom crowd; they always speak of other people having spoken them. It's as if they come with a built-in laugh track. And keeping us on track, they provoke in us click responses, the sort of electronic-entertainment reaction we twitch and jerk to more often lately. We hear Not even close, He's history or What's wrong with this picture?, and we immediately sense the power structure of the moment. In fact, we may subconsciously applaud such speakers because they...
...signing the National Cancer Act. Amidst the publicity for the anniversary of the Act last week, there appeared articles in Time, Scientific American and other journals all proclaiming setbacks as well as significant strides forward, most notably the decline in the overall cancer death rate. However, in an otherwise benign piece from November 25 ("Cancer: The Good News"), Time reported that "the bad news is that all those billions spent on research in basic science may have had little to do with [the decline in cancer deaths]. Doctors have still not found a magic bullet against cancer...
...question of whether marijuana is a dangerous menace or something less than that--even, perhaps, a kind of benign and unfairly persecuted folk medicine--suddenly dominates discussions of the great American drug habit. Last month voters in Arizona and California passed ballot propositions that legalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, a kind of backdoor quasi-legitimation alarming to the pot hawks, who fear that high-minded tolerance (pot as pain reliever, glaucoma salve, general angel of mercy) may become infectious and spread to the other states...
Fifty years is a long time to obstruct justice. The Swiss are worried about their world image? Ah yes, this is the benign country of chocolate, precision timepieces, army knives, downhill skiing, Heidi and William Tell. Hogwash! The Swiss are the people who do business with and protect organized crime, petty dictators, drug dealers and, simply, fiscal terrorists. If the people in power really wanted to do the right thing, it would be easy. The consortium of banks and government would allocate a certain sum of money (far less than the $7 billion figure you mentioned, of course...