Word: bettering
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...world," in 1968 was "like a champion sprinter trying to do the hundred-yard dash with a ball and chain around his ankle." They likened the failings of President Johnson to those of Harold Wilson. "Both had an almost messianic sense of their own importance. Both understood politics better than they understood principles, and both understood principles better than they understood people...
Wallace Stevens once wrote that a community of originals is not a community. But each year brings more originals, more actresses like Mia Farrow, who asks: "What does it mean to be a star today? The only real value it has is in being offered more and better parts." And Dustin Hoffman, who says, "I've always had this fantasy?every actor has, I guess?that when I made it, I'd be able to do whatever I wanted." Up in the Hollywood hills, the superstars may grumble at the youngsters who have turned their backs on the old values...
...that he had won the part?which was to pay him a fast $17,000. "We're in business," he said. "You came up with just the kind of confused panic the character is supposed to have." The rest is mystery. Hoffman himself admits, "If The Graduate were better, it wouldn't have done as well." And neither would he. Today his film price is $425,000; for Jimmy Shine, he receives $4,500 a week against 10% of the gross receipts. But then, the cost of living has risen. The psychoanalyst that he started with four years ago used...
Second Marriages. Although vast sums are spent by the Government on education, the report says, relatively little is known about whether the money is really contributing to better learning. And for all the talk of rising crime rates, there may have been an actual decrease in the harm that crimes do to people. Religious leaders worry about the rising divorce rate. Still, notes the report, the percentage of the population that is married has risen 7.5% since 1940, largely because of the increase in second marriages...
Systems Analysis. The HEW document joins the academic optimists who contend that the long-run benefits of better social calculation can be as immense as those of economic accounting. Already, the report says, tools are being developed for measuring such basic concerns as powerlessness, job satisfaction, freedom of expression, and even the obtuseness of bureaucrats. Eventually, these and other measures might make possible a hardheaded "systems analysis" of the efficacy of government programs...