Word: cults
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Romans were known for their Vestal Virgins, six female virgins who represented the royal house and tended the state cult of Vesta, the goddess of hearth. Violation of their virginity meant being buried alive. With the advent of Christianity, the Virgin Mary became one of the central characters of the religion. Then in the Middle Ages, medieval gynecologists were interested in determining female virginity, while male virginity was consistently overlooked. Even in the colonial period, Queen Elizabeth was heralded as the virtuous and Virgin Queen and the state of Virginia was named in celebration of this fact. Thus, our view...
...Five hundred years ago it was not interesting to sign and date your work. We did not have such a cult of personality back then...
...science will come to him--and not a moment too soon. The despot has ruled his little country for 30 years, but now he's getting old and will have to pass his power on. That makes him nervous; he's seen what can happen to a cult of personality if too weak a personality takes over. Happily, in his country that's not a danger. As soon as the technology of the cloning lab goes global--as it inevitably must--his people can be assured of his leadership long after he's gone...
...communist pecking order in 1945, he became General Secretary of the party and one of Mao's 12 Deputy Premiers in 1956. That was the year Khrushchev came to power in Moscow and denounced Stalin at a secret Soviet party congress. Learning of this indictment of a "personality cult," Deng commended it to his own party--a move used to discredit him in the following decade by the Mao-worshipping Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution. In truth, Deng was still loyal to Mao. Indeed, when Mao moved against his intellectual rivals in the Anti-Rightist purge, Deng organized...
...seeming to strike those inarticulately nihilistic poses that are the type's trademark, than it is to come seriously to grips with his astonishingly rangy body of work. Or even to catch it, since this Florida high school dropout, failed rocker and totally instinctive actor tends to work cult country, where a film's theatrical life-span can be nasty, brutal and short, but where these days the more interesting directors and writers hang...