Word: firmamental
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CANADA'S Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, flashed across the political firmament four years ago as the most magnetic leader since John F. Kennedy. He was cool, intellectual, aloof and telegenic-and, said his critics, arrogant. Last week it was a considerably humbled Trudeau who appeared at a nationally televised press conference. In a direct and stinging rebuke, Canadian voters had stripped his Liberal government of its majority in the 264-seat House of Commons and, as Trudeau put it, "conveyed to me and my colleagues that there have been failures." Now he announced his intention of calling Parliament...
Voters: Don't cry for the dead Vietnamese and Americans; instead rejoice in the clever diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, brightest of the stars in the Nixon firmament. Rich Liberals: Don't kid yourselves into voting as if you really cared about blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the poor and boring of the world get smart and support a candidate who believes in ruthless sell interest and makes no bones about it. And to you timid souls who many be troubled by the disappearance of the Bill of Rights and other key sections of the Constitution Grow...
Citing as its source "an unnamed environmental physicist of several decades back," Applied Optics points out that the temperature of heaven (considered by the ancients to be the entire firmament, including sun, moon and stars) can be accurately computed from data available in the Bible. The data can be found in an Old Testament passage from Isaiah 30:26 that defines the total light radiated heavenward by the sun and the moon in terms of the portion of that light that hits the earth: "Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light...
...brought on by Billy's experience in the Dresden bombing. Having found solace with Montana, he announces, "If we're going to survive, it's necessary to concentrate on the good moments and forget the bad." Shortly afterward, his baby is born, the universe rejoices, the firmament lights up with fireworks. As a resolution of plot and a reconciliation of historical horror, this amounts to a cosmic lollipop...
...darkness: you can't help thinking of it that way; it's irresistably symbolic, really heavy-handed. If you love the movies, though, this doesn't bother you; it seems appropriate, in fact, this mythic aura. Popular terminology is revealing: it is all light--the silver screen, the cinema firmament, stars. And deep down, we all feel the mythic proportions of movies--remember that waiting moment in the darkened theater when you are nothing, and then light is streaming down from obscure heights in a dense particled beam that resolves itself "before your very eyes" into life. You are born...