Word: braved
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Canadian Author Margaret Atwood's sixth novel will remind most readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four. That can hardly be helped. Any new fictional account of how things might go horribly wrong risks comparisons either with George Orwell's classic or with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. To a remarkable degree, these two books have staked out the turf of contemporary antiutopias. Which punishment is it to be this time? Relentless, inescapable totalitarianism or the mindless, synthetic stupors of technology? As it turns out, Atwood's look at the future takes place under conditions that Orwell would recognize. Repression...
...cautionary tale, Atwood's novel lacks the direct, chilling plausibility of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World. It warns against too much: heedless sex, excessive morality, chemical and nuclear pollution. All of these may be worthwhile targets, but such a future seems more complicated than dramatic. But Offred's narrative is fascinating in a way that transcends tense and time: the record of an observant soul struggling against a harsh, mysterious world...
...million on his latest campaign; such political extravagance will not be possible in an era of Boren-Goldwater. It is hardly practical to refuse PAC donations considering the high cost of a campaign. Legislators who rely solely on individual contributions are a dying breed; few politicians remain willing to brave the political waters without trusty PAC donations to hold onto. PAC reform would consequently make resisting the encroachment of special interests significantly more practical for legislators...
...Laing, the favorite shrink of student rebels in the '60s, retains his romantic opinion of schizophrenics as brave victims who are defying a cruel culture. He suggested that many people are diagnosed as schizophrenic simply because they sleep during the day and stay awake at night. Schizophrenia did not exist until the word was invented, he said. That was too much for Judd | Marmor, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. He called the panel a "travesty." At a later panel, a woman in the audience asked Laing how he would deal with schizophrenics. Laing bobbed and weaved...
...Rembrandt at all. Rosenberg and other experts have speculated that the old warrior might have been Rembrandt's older brother Adriaen, a poor shoemaker in Leyden. But if the painting isn't by Rembrandt, then we have no idea who the warrior was, just an old man, tough and brave and sad. The experts are trying to learn more by subjecting the painting to a series of technical tests. These include activating some of its neutrons so that they can be compared with the neutrons in authenticated Rembrandts. The experts are always right, as we know...