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That timetable is highly controversial. For one thing, it would knock out of the running as the earliest hominid, or manlike creature, a favorite contender of many paleontologists, the small and apelike Ramapithecus (for the Hindu epic hero Rama), whose bones were first found in India and who died out some 10 million years ago. Perhaps more important, so recent a split would seem to allow far too little time for the development of a creature as sophisticated as modern...
Sometimes it seems that some ideal system of manners must be imprinted in the collective unconscious of the race; at any rate, men and women have been trying long enough to discover it. One of the earliest known books, the Instructions of Ptahhotep, was an Egyptian behavior manual written around 2350 B.C. (Among Ptahhotep's precepts: Never offend a self-made man, and "Be silent, for it is better than teftef flowers.") Ever since then, social thinkers have believed that in manners, even in the most frivolous gestures of a culture, they could detect its hidden tectonics and tendencies...
...setting for the services is strikingly beautiful and fitting. Built by Ralph Adams Cram in the mid 1930s, the chapel is one of his simplest and most moving. Its load-bearing arches recall the earliest Christian basilicas. The polished marble of the High Altar is set off from walls of rough-hewn granite, by vague natural light from two Connick studio stained glass windows above...
...From his earliest works, originating with the long, personal lamentations that characterized Piano Man to his recent conglomeration of more commercially oriented compositions on The Stranger, Joel has filled his songs with a rebellious spirit, a "New York state of mind," and the discontent of youthful passions, all of which energize his musical efforts...
Despite the complications, women have served, in some manner, with the U.S. armed forces from the earliest days of the Republic. Molly Pitcher, who was said to have snatched up and continued firing her disabled husband's musket during the Battle of Monmouth, was a legendary heroine of the Revolution. Some 350,000 of the 16 million armed forces mobilized during World War II were women. They served as airplane mechanics, pilots ferrying bombers, parachute riggers and gunnery instructors, as well as in the more "traditional" roles of nursing and administration. In 1948, however, the Women's Armed...