Word: grimness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Latin for slimy liquid, stench, poison -- and the connotation is appropriate, not only for the AIDS virus but for the untold number of other varieties that have been preying on animals and plants since long before Homo sapiens appeared on earth. Indeed, the current AIDS epidemic is a grim reminder that these infinitesimal, bizarre creatures may be mankind's deadliest enemy. And scientists are warning that a perennial viral threat, the upcoming flu season, could be far more dangerous than usual -- more evidence that these tiny foes are responsible for a large share of human suffering...
...copyright on Gaston Leroux's 1911 thriller The Phantom of the Opera expired this year, plans were announced for no fewer than three competing musical adaptations. The flurry of interest was perplexing. Leroux's tale, part horror melodrama, part bodice-ripping gothic, seemed too grim and kinky for a musical. The central character is, after all, not only hideously ugly but an extortionist, kidnaper, incendiary and megalomaniac -- and the heroine must at least halfway fall in love with...
...been, for ten years now, a cool hand at bringing up all manner of crawly things from just below the surface. Byrne and the Heads made music that examined some of the oddest, spookiest manifestations of modern emotional life, sang songs that turned grim tidings into deadpan jokes and disaffection into disarming social parables. Byrne's lyrics played four-wall handball with anomie and, floating all around the band's cunning and enterprising rhythms, moved the Heads past punk and over the crest of rock's new wave into a forefront they had sharpened up for themselves...
McCloy began as a poor boy from Philadelphia and rose to head the World Bank. He was a master at bringing consensus out of chaos, sometimes with grim results. The decision not to warn Japan about the atom bomb, for example, was made without a full discussion of the consequences. McCloy, then Assistant Secretary of War, shaped a vague "declaration" to Japan that was agreeable to other U.S. officials but that did nothing to avert the use of the Bomb. Bohlen, a career man in the Foreign Service, was instrumental in getting the views of his lifelong friend and fellow...
Gorbachev set the stage for the grim Sunday denouement on Saturday morning when he plucked a typewritten page from his briefcase. The paper summarized his wide-ranging set of new proposals, including cutting the strategic arsenals of both sides by 50% and eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) from Europe altogether. Gorbachev called for ten more years of strict adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a provision that would prevent SDI from producing "weapons of any new type which would provide military superiority to that side." He also made clear that the missile cutbacks were linked to curtailment...