Word: effects
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...most conventional plays don't. In recounting the horrific, but hardly implausible, series of events that push their friendship to the breaking point, the two cops narrate much of the action; occasionally comment indirectly on each other's recollections; sometimes re-create actual scenes together. Cumulatively, the effect is to drain the sometimes shocking events of any melodrama, to force us to see them with the same resigned, matter-of-fact detachment these characters do. The taut, 90-minute script builds with a tragic inevitability, yet with a coda of redemption that seems neither forced nor fake...
...street kid who comes to work for him, it (like A Steady Rain) purports to have some street cred. But the thugs who menace the young employee (leaning on him to pay off gambling debts) look like B-movie retreads, the off-screen violence seems manufactured for effect, and the denouement is far more sentimental...
...crime. Moore's analysis suggests a correlation: 69% of people who had been convicted of a violent act by age 34 reported eating candy almost every day as youngsters; 42% of people who had not been arrested for violent behavior reported the same. "Initially we thought this [effect] was probably due to something else," says Moore. "So we tried to control for parental permissiveness, economic status, whether the kids were urban or rural. But the result remained. We couldn't get rid of it." (See the 25 crimes of the century...
...displays of strength and awe, going back to humanity's first civilizations. Ancient Mesopotamian kings lined their cities and citadels with friezes depicting glorious conquests - often using the common visual theme of a giant potentate in front of his army, literally stomping on the heads of his foes. The effect was to boost a monarch's prestige and cement his political authority. Through the sacred Gate of Ishtar in Babylon, returning warrior kings would march into the city down a passage flanked by 60 giant lion statues on either side, with murals of the gods smiling upon them...
...Karzai's affiliation with warlords such as his newly appointed vice presidential running mate, Marshal Fahim, and Abdul Rashid Dostum, a northern warlord whose flagrant disregard of Afghan law over the past several years was overlooked in exchange for his support in the election. Such protests have had little effect, says Ahmad Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "Rhetoric and public criticism that pushes a leader to a corner will not work, especially in Afghanistan where pride is an issue. If you just go in and say 'Don't deal with Dostum' or 'Stop corruption' and leave...