Word: gifted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...revisions he made of Newton, he continued to side with his predecessor on the issue of causality. He abhorred chaos and revolution for its own sake. He was devoted to constancy as much as to relativity, and to the illogical and the senses. In the end, his most useful gift may be not that he pulled the world apart but that once that was done, he strove to put it back together...
However, the most indirect, though by no means benign, gift of the Khan was the plague. Originating in the jungles of southern China and Burma, bubonic plague traveled with Mongol armies and then from caravan to caravan till it reached the Crimea in 1347. From there it would take a third of all Europeans. Bereft of labor and talent, the fledgling nation states were pressed to maximize tax collection, bureaucracy and state control of the force of arms, leading to the heightened competitiveness of the West just as Europe's ships sailed for the riches of a distant empire...
...Padua in a small chapel completely decorated in powerful renditions of the life of the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ. In each panel a few simple figures anchored in the foreground vividly act out the joy, grief, fear and pity of the Christian story. Giotto's gift lay in transforming the viewer into a participant: people felt as if they could touch holy figures Ruskin once called "Mama, Papa and the Baby...
Russians give presents at New Year rather than at Christmas, but none could match Boris Yeltsin?s gift to his chosen successor. Russia?s president shocked the nation by resigning Friday, handing the reins of power over to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and bringing next summer?s scheduled presidential election forward to March. "Yeltsin?s decision is plainly driven by the need to ensure Putin?s victory," says TIME Moscow correspondent Andrew Meier. "Bringing the election forward gives him a huge advantage by allowing him to ride the wave of support he built up in the Chechyna campaign to carry...
...letting go of the presidency," says Meier. "He and his family have long feared a Caucescu scenario, and there?s no doubt that he wouldn?t have quit unless he?d gotten all the immunity guarantees he needed." Yeltsin also asked Russia?s people for a New Year?s gift in return. "I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true," he said in an emotional TV address. "And also I would like to beg forgiveness for having not justified your hopes." In other words, he wrote his own political epitaph...