Word: conceptions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gandhi is that rare great man held in universal esteem, a figure lifted from history to moral icon. The fundamental message of his transcendent personality persists. He stamped his ideas on history, igniting three of the century's great revolutions--against colonialism, racism, violence. His concept of nonviolent resistance liberated one nation and sped the end of colonial empires around the world. His marches and fasts fired the imagination of oppressed people everywhere. Like the millions of Indians who pressed around his funeral cortege seeking darshan--contact with his sanctity--millions more have sought freedom and justice under the Mahatma...
...distant cities became linked through commerce (much of it orchestrated by written contract), culture acquired a kind of disaster insurance. Any valuable meme--the concept of the chariot or of coins--would spread so fast from city to city that it could survive any catastrophes that afflicted its birthplace. The world's data-processing system was getting better at making backup copies...
...news for mothers of the world: If a new diet concept holds up to scrutiny, it could mean a rash of noisy and vigorous gum chewing. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic measured the energy expenditure of masticating test subjects and found that chewing sugarless gum burns about 11 calories an hour - an initially meager loss that could nevertheless manifest itself as a more significant 11 pounds a year. Of course, that's only if the chewing is constant over the course of the day, which is defined distressingly as "every waking hour," or about 12 hours per day. Study participants...
Richard Eyre, father of nine and author of Teaching Our Children Values, says he introduced the concept of "real/imaginary" to his children when they were little. "The birth of Jesus is real/real," he says. "It's an actual historical event that we celebrate. Invisible friends are imaginary/imaginary. Santa Claus is real/imaginary. He's in-between." Eyre says his kids were relieved to be offered an option of believing in the spirit of Christmas without having to be too literal about Santa Claus, and that the tradition of real/imaginary has been passed on to his grandchildren...
...last the one-sided concept of modern art has been breached, with news that an exhibit of Norman Rockwell's representational work [ART, Dec. 6] will appear at New York City's Guggenheim Museum, the stronghold of "nonobjective art." I suspect that for a short while we will experience some fireworks between the opposing sides of the contemporary art scene. I suggest that museums have two curators, each expressing one side of the polarized modern-art controversy. They could compete by means of the artworks each chooses and engage in lively debates. Only then will people have an opportunity...