Word: greate
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General anesthesia - the enabler of modern surgery and medical intervention - is one of the great triumphs of the scientific method. Ether, the compound from which almost all modern anesthetics are derived, was discovered largely by luck and its derivatives through trial and error. As a result, however, much about these drugs remains mysterious. Even today, doctors are baffled as to why exactly anesthetics cause unconsciousness in patients. (See the most common hospital mishaps...
...Iran's nuclear ambitions to a characteristic suicide mission. Why this analogy? Normally one does not compare a whole nation to an individual, but Iran, as a Shi'ite theocracy, gives the appearance of acting out of similar motives. Iran celebrates the Shi'ite community that clusters around the great martyr Hussein, son of Ali. It used this ideology as it sent tens of thousands of undertrained young volunteers to their senseless death in the war against Iraq. Would this ideology play any role if Iran felt both cornered and it also possessed nuclear weapons...
...book is that Christianity and Judaism have evolved a very powerful tradition of comedy that undermines the heroic stature of someone who presumed to be the Messiah. And in some ways, the suicide bomber is someone who says, "I'm like the Messiah, my martyrdom is so great that what I'm doing for the community is like what Hussein...
...invest in organizations that do performances or comedy then sensibility changes. It will take a generation but suddenly, the martyr will become a Don Quixote. Don Quixote thinks he is a great character but everyone else thinks of him as a fool. It would turn the martyr into somebody who presumes way too much about himself. It wouldn't eliminate terrorists but it would undermine the culture that promotes suicide terror...
Just before the global financial crisis exploded, the conference halls in China were alive with the rhetoric of economic reform. Hardly a week went by without some think tank or ministry in Beijing toasting the 30th anniversary of China's great opening to the world and outlining what the next phase of China's historic development would entail. At a time when experts and policymakers everywhere were decrying "global economic imbalances," China would do its bit to rectify them...