Word: benignity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Pity the poor beleaguered cable guy. Direct-broadcast satellites are eroding his turf from the air while the Baby Bells and the burgeoning Internet creep in over the phone system. Worse still, he faces this growing competition while trying to shake a public image only a bit more benign than Saddam Hussein...
...message was: We don't have parties, we have relatives, a big national family picnic. Which is why on the first day, politicians were banished from sight. Actor Christopher Reeve barely mentioned Clinton in his speech, and when he talked about government, it was to describe it as the benign paternalistic arm ready to embrace America's civic life as a mirror of the homes baby boomers grew up in. Sarah Brady, the gun-control advocate, brought her wheelchair-bound husband onstage to deliver another above-the-fray message: Guns kill kids too. And of course Hillary Rodham Clinton returned...
What if we discovered beings millions of years more advanced than us? We may be no more than raw material, food or vermin standing in the way of their exploiting our resources. Why should we expect them to be benign and kinder to us than we were to the now extinct dodo? Perhaps the vast distances of space and the limits of relativity are a blessing. We might be better advised to listen more and broadcast less. RICHARD MARSHALL Tongaat, South Africa...
...common denominator in each case: abnormal weather had caused malnutrition, weakened animal immune systems and spurred the reproduction of viruses. Epstein also notes that once ordinarily benign microbes invade weakened animals, they can become sufficiently deadly to invade healthy populations. The real threat for people, says Epstein, may not be a single disease, but armies of emergent microbes raising havoc among a host of creatures. "The message I take home," he says, "is that diseases afflicting plants and animals can send ripples through economies and societies no less disastrous than those affecting humans...
...some of these shows, such as the proliferating Star Trek spin-offs, the aliens are benign, intellectually curious--like American mid-century liberals, only with pointy ears or exposed frontal lobes. The Zeitgeistiest programs, however, tap into a pop persecution mania. Consider this: the U.S. stands unchallenged as a world power, is not at war, enjoys a high standard of living and has relatively stable rates of interest and unemployment; yet polls continue to show a profound malaise. People feel crushed by government, abused by corporate employers, baffled by computers. "Technology is moving fast-forward," says Carter, "and we rarely...