Word: direness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...poems I have read and discussed over the past few years; works filled with angst-ridden protagonists of privileged education, disillusioned but well-meaning idealists in search of greater Truth and Beauty. Were we like Quentin Compson, confused, disenchanted rowers ultimately propelled by our own heightened consciousness to a dire end (near the Weekes footbridge no less)? Or J. Alfred Prufrock (coming and going, speaking of the Michelangelo we had learned so assiduously in our Literature and Arts B class), worried about physical appearance, afraid to eat a peach? Or were we more like Amory Blaine, our reliance...
...social life, discussion in the makeshift community of the shuttle bus about fragmentation, questions about advising raised by student suicides or the disenchanted scholar who once sat next to me and wrote, "section is like a bad first date" in his notebook in lieu of notes. Things can seem dire and dismal amidst the ugly gray of slush and snow or the guilt produced by unopened books during Christmas vacation, and sometimes we forget why we came here in the first place...
That question lies at the core of the dire declarations in the report that China has systematically stolen our vital security secrets, pilfering design information on every advanced thermonuclear warhead we deploy, on missile guidance, even on the never fielded neutron bomb, to acquire weapons knowledge "on a par" with the U.S. With "insatiable" appetite and "enormous" energy over decades, Beijing's agents mined valuable military information from every corner of the American military-industrial complex and haven't given up yet. From that time to the present, a permissive, often inept U.S. government let the People's Republic help...
...Wallace suggests coyly that Hideous Men is meant to interrogate the reader, to elicit fresh responses to horrors that have lost their edge in the age of information overload. Sometimes this works; when it doesn't, we get a facetious exercise like the "pop quizzes" in Octet that pose dire situations mimicking academic test questions...
Welcome to Troubleland. Orlando, the mecca of mega theme parks, may have too much of a great thing. With seven large parks on the ground and more on the way, industry analysts are issuing dire warnings: "Orlando is now a zero-sum game," says Curt Alexander, an analyst with Media Group Research. "There will be bloodletting of biblical proportions." The theme-park glut promises bargains for consumers but a brutal shakeout that could pound the earnings of park owners Disney, Seagram (Universal) and Anheuser-Busch (Busch Gardens, Sea World...