Word: faustian
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Shortly before her own tragic death in December, Bhutto was negotiating an American-backed deal with President Pervez Musharraf to allow her to become prime minister again. The lawyer-led, pro-democracy movement in Pakistan saw this as a Faustian pact with a hated dictator...
...already have surrounding the name “Faust” will work for or against our new president?SP: Will people think that she is Mephistophlolean. No I think she’ll be just fine, although it was irresistible for some columnists to use “Faustian Bargain” when she was elected president.12. FM: Do you think the name Steven Pinker has semantic associations?SP: I don’t know, the last name is a little bit silly, so maybe that helps. It’s hard to take yourself too too seriously when...
Today begins Harvard’s Faustian renaissance. The warranty’s out on this University’s newest administrative appliance at a crucial juncture in our history. On the cusp of an epic expansion, a new undergraduate curriculum, and massive administrative turnover, Harvard needs capable leadership now more than ever.It is thus dumbfounding that the University’s Governing Boards would elect to the presidency a pants-wearing, child-bearing scholar of social history (read: history for weaklings) who doesn’t even hold a degree from Harvard. By entrusting our community to a scaredy...
...after writing a historical account of Jesus’s crucifixion—a book that becomes a meta-novel within the text—breaks out to serve as the hero. He yearns for the love of his former muse and mistress, Margarita. She, in turn, makes a Faustian deal with Satan to reunite with her long lost love. What ensues is absurd, intricate, and absolute unforgettable. The book is simultaneously a fairy tale, an epic, a religious allegory, a political satire, and, primarily, a harrowing romance. Yet, despite it’s amalgam of genres, it always maintains...
...round and time is circular; human nature is constant, but 4) may be damaged--or what is worse, humiliated--by novelties, which (like '70s neckties or television in any decade) may have about them an aura of imbecility, leading to 5) the Paradox of Retrograde Progress. Television is a Faustian bargain (a dazzling technology that induces dullness and even moronism), and the Internet has the same ominous tendencies. It is not a bad idea to mistrust the omnivorous vulgarity of innovation, even its (paradoxical) death instinct. Novelty, in its pointless ingenuity, keeps slaying itself...