Word: conundrum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This is not an exam question in a college philosophy course but a moral conundrum at the core of perhaps the most intriguing case facing the U.S. Supreme Court, Payne v. Tennessee. Justice David Souter, the court's swing vote, asked during oral argument last month whether "it really is legitimate to value victims differently depending upon the circumstances of the lives that they have chosen to lead." Tennessee Attorney General Charles Burson's response was unequivocal: "There can be no doubt that the taking of the life of the President creates much more societal harm than the taking...
Protocol Problems: When three high-profile Harvard officials walk through a door, who walks first? This seemingly simple conundrum was enough to confuse three of Harvard's most well-known officers--President Derek C. Bok, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brendan A. Maher and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III--for at least a few seconds as they stood outside the Faculty Club entrance early yesterday. The three were there to attend a one-day conference on Afro-American Studies, and, after a brief conference, apparently decided that Bok--who was the senior official--should...
...INNOCENT by Ian McEwan (Doubleday; $18.95). Set in Berlin in 1955, at the height of the cold war, McEwan's thriller deftly solves the conundrum of writing a spy novel in the era of glasnost...
...golf instructor at the local country club until he is fired on the probably unwarranted suspicion of stealing. With her husband suddenly out of work, Jean, the mother, takes a job giving swimming lessons. As Joe gets used to these domestic changes, he is presented with a fresh conundrum: his father's sudden decision to go off and help fight the forest fires raging nearby and his mother's fierce opposition to this plan. "I'm a grown woman," she says to Joe's father. "Why don't you act like a grown man, Jerry...
...great conundrum of the Afrikaner politician is that the starting point of black demands -- one man, one vote -- exceeds the end point of white flexibility. Moderate Afrikaners find the idea of black rule fearsome primarily because they are convinced it would lead to economic chaos. De Klerk's real mandate from his Afrikaner supporters is to find a way to give power to the black man without rendering the white man powerless...