Word: formulaic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rite and techno-trend vocabulary meet in "programming," or getting the most out of your talisman. One West Coast formula for doing so goes this way: first, "clear" the stone by washing it in ocean water (in a pinch, salt water will do). Then leave it outside for at least 24 hours so that rays of the sun and moon may penetrate it. A quicker, high-tech method is to pass an audiocassette eraser over each side of the crystal for half a minute. To program, after the crystal has been cleared, hold it in both hands and blow...
...particularly well-conceived episode, Cat also learns to play the hypocritical game. On the first day back at school, the teacher tells the students to write a paper about "how I spent my summer." Cat knows the formula for this kind of banal composition, and he dashes off a list of clichees--swimming, sunning, singing campfire songs...
...increase and while still boosting defense spending by 3%, after adjustment for inflation. The deficit reduction would come entirely through further cuts in social and other nondefense spending, along with short-term expedients like sales of Government assets. But private economists are almost universally doubtful that the formula can work. Charles Schultze, a Brookings Institution scholar who was President Carter's chief economic adviser, sees "no way" that the 1988 Gramm-Rudman goal can be met without a tax increase...
...corrected in Oz' big-budget Hollywood musical. Whatever thematic points--largely an assault on the Eisenhower-era vision of idyll--the staged version had to make are ignored here, as is the head-on assault on pop culture. Instead of consistency, Oz has subscribed to the youth comedy formula in force since The Blues Brothers: the bigger the blast, the louder the laughs...
Lending vigor to student demonstrations are many factors: frightful crowding, unremitting competition, basic insecurity, frustration of aspirations for modernity, indignation at corruption and Party elitism, personal ambition to lead the new generation, patriotic readiness to sacrifice oneself for the cause of betterment. The best formula is to talk to Chinese students now at Harvard and to try to make your own mixture...