Word: fad
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Just before World War II a marimo fad started, and thousands of the gamboling plants were snatched from Lake Akan. But the war intervened to save them from extinction, and in 1947 the Education Ministry's Committee for the Protection of Cultural Objects dug up an old law that proclaimed the marimos "a national treasure." It threatened fine or imprisonment for anyone who molested them...
...proclamation backfired. It advertised the marimos, and a second fad swept through Japan. Stealthy marimo-kapparai (marimo snatchers) haunted Lake Akan, diving into the water at night to kidnap the helpless creatures. Marimo smugglers brought them to Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, and Japanese tourists bought them furtively, paying up to $50. Biologists and nature lovers wrung their hands in anguish, but nothing effective was done. The little pets from Lake Akan were snatched almost to extinction...
...TONTINE, by Thomas B. Costain (2 vols., 930 pp.; Doubleday; $5.95), is Author Costain's eighth novel, a Literary Guild choice for October, and may serve only one useful purpose: to popularize the fascinating gimmick referred to in the title. The tontine (rhymes with "on green"), a fad which keeps reappearing through history, combines the suspense of the $64,000 question with the finances of the pyramid club. In Costain's tontine, begun in England just after the Battle of Waterloo, people in each of eight age groups enter the setup at 100 guineas a head. The money...
...human soul immortal? Is Christianity just a passing fad? Is Freud God? Assistant Professor Alston of the University of Michigan will not answer these questions in "Philosphy 190," but he will examine some of the ways in which the phenomenon of religious belief can be interpreted. St. Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Santayana, and Freud had various views on this topic, and the ideas will all come out in Emerson...
Lillian's zoom to success is not surprising. She has looks, a brassy voice that -when anybody cares to listen-is both true and spirited, and she can play trombone. The rock 'n' roll fad has probably whirled her up faster than otherwise would have happened, but her sudden good fortune has not made her cocky. "If anything goes off in this business," she says. I'll go back to driving a truck...