Word: constant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Change, when it was constant and fairly manageable, used to be called progress. At the deepest point in the Depression, Chicago held a 1933 World's Fair gamely celebrating "The Century of Progress." The slogan was forgivably boosterish then, but now change is regarded far more neutrally. The word describes not merely the advances but all the tumults, the violence, the wrenching readjustments of our era. Even necessary change has its costs, for as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead put it, "It is the first step in wisdom to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which...
...swept by panics, smothered by doubts and fears, and her death had been long in coming. Twenty years ago, when she was a warmly shopworn 16, she had first tried to kill herself. Guilt became her constant companion and she broke promises and contracts and friendships to seek it out. She felt pulled and taunted and cheated, but when she spoke of what troubled her, her thoughts always resolved themselves so innocently that she seemed more frolicsome than frightened. "I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual," she would say. And her brow would furrow...
...coast of Central America are de facto American lakes, completely open to our naval forces and nearly inaccessible to anyone else's. Readily available supply and refueling facilities, a large number of friendly ports, and especially the proximity of the continental United States allow the U.S. to enjoy a constant advantage over the only non-NATO deep water navy in the world--the Soviet Navy. At no time during my cruise were we unaware of the crushing predominance of the United States; sailors told me that many of the Caribbean islanders refer to America as the "Northern Colossus...
...sense of context, but at other times these just complicate an already nebulous plot. For example, Bolden and a fictional photographer named Bellocq make a pact in which the musician supplies his friend with nude women for subjects. Besides the questionable relation of the episode to the plot, the constant flashing of nudes borders on the offensive and pornographic...
What remained constant in Mao was his iron will, the invincible conviction of his own righteousness. Political analysts harp on two words: "speed" and "struggle." Mao had acquired the lust for speed in the last year of the revolution. In the fall of 1948 the commander in chief of his Manchurian strike forces, Marshal Lin Biao, had seized the key city of Shenyang (Mukden); but so many of Chiang Kai-shek's combat divisions were still at large in Manchuria that Lin Biao preferred to move with caution. Mao overruled him. Strike for the escape ports of Manchuria, he said...