Word: esotericism
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Now John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University, has written a book about mathematical illiteracy. Titled Innumeracy (Hill & Wang; $16.95), it seeks to explain why so many people are numerically inept and shows how they can learn to work and play with figures. Paulos, 43, has no patience...
Yet some professors caution that the shift from history to literature may move Afro-American studies away from the political agenda that created such departments in the first place, thereby making them too esoteric.
"This field has to be endowed," Frye says, "because no university will support it. It's too esoteric. `Iran? Iraq?' people ask, `Where is that?' No one wants to study anything west of Wooster."
Georgia's Robert Prechter, 39, had become the hottest stock guru in 1986 and '87 because of the bullish predictions in his newsletter The Elliott Wave Theorist ($233 a year). He based his forecasts on a mix of esoteric formulas and offbeat indicators like hemlines: the return of the miniskirt...
A song with less esoteric and more social overtones is "Dance On," a scathing look at gang violence, and murder in Detroit and how it was influenced by war on television. At the end the question "What color is your money today?" is especially potent.