Word: bettering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...three times they end up dying. Their deaths--Wanagi's and Ahbleza's wives die--only strengthen the men's resolve to be pure and unselfish; neither takes a second wife. This attitude indicates the novel's Hollywood morals; the good guys get better and win while the bad guys worsen and lose...
...with Kugelmass stems from the fact that it simply does not belong with the Shaffer plays. Including it not only makes the evening too long (more than three hours), but also emphasizes the play's own inferiority. Kugelmass appears even more withered and yellow when juxtaposed with the other, better shows. Therefore, unless Kugelmass can be sparked with the same humor, vitality and depth as the Shaffer plays, perhaps it would be best left to succumb to another of biology's theories--survival of the fittest. Ear and Eye are excellent, even with some marginal performances, and deserve...
...Soviet bloc, going the Gideons one better...
...happyologists are doing a bit better than that, though their young science is now approximately where navigation was before the invention of the compass. In some ways, as Humorist Russell Baker recently observed, the happyologists resemble sociologists in their dedication to proving what everybody has known all along. Baker groaned at the supposedly big discovery that an unhappy childhood does not necessarily lead to an unhappy adulthood. Who could fail to echo his groan when it is reported, as though it were news, that money, beyond some uncertain minimum, does not buy happiness? A horselaugh might even be the appropriate...
Given time, the happyologists could conceivably come up with a useful, or at least a discerning, answer. Perhaps the question is so fundamental that, like love and wisdom, it will al ways elude human definition. For the moment, surely, it can be answered decisively, for better or worse, only by each in dividual. In short, the considerable resources, even good intentions, of science have so far disclosed little about happiness that was not available in the words of Seneca "Unblest is he who thinks himself unblest") in ancient times or those of Abe Lincoln ("Most folks are about as happy...