Word: firmament
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sixteen hundred freshmen implies 1600 freshman stories. Some are funny; most are ordinary. Once in a rare while a freshman story will embody the absolute essence of mortal terror and existential nausea, a crash dive into the dark firmament of human life. In these stories the inscription above Dexter Gate reads not "Enter to grow in wisdom," but instead "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here...
...stars are always out in the Los Angeles firmament, but last week it was political, not professional pull that ruled who was in what constellation. Giving her first public singing performance in six years, Barbra Streisand opened her Malibu ranch to the wallets of Jack Nicholson, Bette Midler, Jane Fonda and some 500 others who shelled out an astronomical $2,500 apiece for veal from Spago (very haute) and a backyard concert (very hot). Organized by the Hollywood Women's Political Committee to support six Democratic senatorial candidates, the affair was taped by HBO. Streisand crooned old favorites (People...
...Socialist victory was largely a tribute to the charismatic Gonzalez, who has become one of the brightest stars in Europe's political firmament. Though voters no longer squeal like groupies when the graying-at-the-temples Prime Minister takes a podium, he retains magnetic appeal. "There is less emotionalism than before," says a senior foreign ministry official. "But he can still convince the man in the street." Gonzalez did that last March, when he persuaded a skeptical electorate to vote to keep Spain in NATO...
With terrestrials like Carl Sagan, who needs extras? Five years ago, he brought the cosmos into your living room and became an instant star in the electronic firmament. The astronomer at Cornell now takes aim at the fiction best-seller charts. Contact, his first novel, dramatizes a pet theme: the possibility of unearthly life in the universe. Despite dialogue like "Holy Toledo. That's hundreds of janskys," the book is an engaging pastiche of science and speculation...
...leader of the newest wave, and the fastest-rising star in the political firmament today, is Hu Qili (pronounced Chee-lee), 55, a gifted Communist Youth League activist. Even before the Communist takeover in 1949, Hu Qili was recruited for the league's secretariat while a student at Peking University. ! There he attracted the attention of Hu Yaobang. Hu Qili is now the General Secretary's protege and, according to Politburo Member Peng Zhen, the likely successor. Hu Qili is described as a smooth and charismatic man. "He is what we call both Red and expert," says a middle-level...