Word: functions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that of experience. The interviewees are not fictional characters, but real people divulging the most intimate and, oftimes, humiliating details of their lives. And this is why, unless you are using it for a research paper, The Unknown City can be hard to get through. Perhaps it is a function of a culture that looks too much to happy endings, but as you read The Unknown City you find yourself waiting for an auspicious sign or thread of hope. None comes. Perhaps this is expected in a novel, but, in a sociological analysis documenting the lives of men and women...
...sophisticate with minimal survival skills to a woman who can bop a bad guy with a fallen tree branch and help repair the airplane for a getaway. She is also encumbered with a tiresome fiance (David Schwimmer), who takes up a lot of preaccident screen time and whose only function is to give her pause when Quinn shows his true, irresistibly cuddlesome colors...
...first stage at which my wife's exam would differ from mine would be at the cardiac-function lab. While she would have been given an electrocardiogram at rest, a stress test might have been ruled out. EKGs of women on the treadmill are notoriously inaccurate, frequently showing abnormalities where none exist. Instead, women are carefully questioned about family history that might reveal a disposition toward heart disease. Only if heart disease runs in the family would the clinic be tempted to run a stress test...
...vinegar of the fiery peasant woman who began her fashion revolution against society by aiming at the head, with hats. Her boyish "flapper" creations were in stark contrast to the Belle Epoque millinery that was in vogue at the time, and about which she asked, "How can a brain function under those things?" Something that Chanel can never be accused of is not using her brain. Her sharp mind is apparent in everything she did, from her savvy use of logos to her deep understanding of the power of personality and packaging, even the importance of being copied...
...social critic Derrick Bell writes in his book Gospel Choirs, one of black music's earliest functions was to get people through hard times. During slavery, spirituals would sometimes be encoded with secret messages, directions on how to get North to freedom. Franklin's cryptic hurt serves a similar function; it draws us in, it commands empathy, and it ultimately points us north. Listen to her voice on the prayerful Wholy Holy, spiraling away, taking us away. North out of heartbreak, north out of oppression, north toward where we want...