Word: chimera
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Imagine a monster with the teeth of a shark, the talons of an eagle, the neck of an antelope and the hindquarters of an ostrich. A mythological chimera? Not at all. "I stepped down into this gulch," recounts University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, "took 25 steps and screamed." Directly ahead, atop a sandstone knoll, lay the full skeleton of a 2-meter-long (about 6 ft.) carnivore. It proved to be the most ancient dinosaur discovered to date...
...most of them, return was a financial and political chimera. Against their wishes and traditions, home became the U.S. Initially, their neighbors regarded them, in Bret Harte's words, as the "Heathen Chinee," an enduring caricature of cheap labor and social isolation, living in towns within cities, operating behind the impenetrable facades of restaurants and laundries. It was decades before the hostility softened to tolerance and, in recent years, to appreciation...
This is a chimera and liberals with a consistent philosophy realize it. The liberal notion of individual liberty and right to privacy, as we all know, holds only insofar as one person's actions do not adversely affect other people in society. It is impossible to argue that an abortionist's actions do not adversely affect at least one important person in addition to the woman: her child...
...emerges as the principal spokesman for the overarching theme of both the TV series and the book. That theme is that nuclear weapons are not really weapons at all; they are political instruments whose very existence deters their own use. Author Newhouse calls the quest for strategic advantage "the chimera of the nuclear...
Should the United States seek nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union? Or is superiority a dangerous chimera that we must not pursue? Americans must ultimately decide. Events of the day, though, remind us of the potential for White House strategists to circumvent the wishes and expectations of the American people. It is incumbent, then, that we make our decision clear...