Word: enigmas
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Much else is on Blessing's mind in this weirdly comic piece: Shakespeare's shaky dramaturgy (rescued by friendly pirates, indeed!), the meaning of death and the afterlife, the ubiquitous enigma of TV. The play lampoons official cover-ups: by the time Hamlet's friend Horatio tells people what really happened at Elsinore, everyone believes Fortinbras' concoction about murderous Polish spies instead. The hero puns bawdily about nights with Ophelia's lubricious ghost. But the deepest concern is for the shallowness of modern politics...
...Lone Ranger. These days he no longer rides alone: he routinely joins a group that includes Reagan appointees Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor and Bush appointee David Souter. Having written only a few rulings since joining the court this term, Souter remains something of an , enigma; yet he has clearly provided the right wing -- spearheaded by Rehnquist and Scalia -- with a crucial fifth vote in a number of important cases in which his predecessor Brennan would almost certainly have been on the opposing side...
Cracking the enigma of Mississippi's Delta for this week's issue, however, strained even Sidey's talents. To prepare for the story -- the latest in a series of dispatches appearing under the rubric Hugh Sidey's America -- Sidey spent two weeks poring over books on the region and interviewed almost 100 sources. "The Delta is so complex and different," he says. "There, the struggle for the nation's soul is still going...
What remains of Jungle Fever is controversial enough. Some people have urged a boycott because, they allege, the film puts down black women. Lee is hardly unique among black directors (or, notoriously, black rap artists) in viewing woman as something between an enemy and an enigma. In Boyz N the Hood, most of the women are shown as doped-up, career-obsessed or irrelevant to the man's work of raising a son in an American war zone...
...everybody had an identical twin from which to harvest organs, such drugs would be unnecessary. Failing that, doctors try, where possible, to find the closest approximation of a twin: a good genetic match. In a feat every bit as heroic as cracking the Enigma code during World War II, immunologists have determined just what makes for a good tissue match. Research dating from the 1960s shows that the immune system has developed its own set of molecular passwords, called human leukocyte antigens, that identify every nerve, every capillary, every organ as either friend or foe. If a cell displays...