Word: heroics
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...seem sullen and ungrateful. Simply ending with “thanks” no longer cuts it, although in most cases such an ending would most accurately describe our emotion; we rarely scream the word “thanks” when an act being rewarded is less-than-heroic. The misuse of this punctuation mark has spiraled even beyond the single exclamation point; since one represents the standard suffix to a message, you now have to put two or three extra points to show actual excitement or pleasure. Indulging this cultural norm incites a positive feedback system, with more...
...variation of the first study, Gray gave a weight to passersby and told them to hold it for as long as they could in one hand while writing a story with their other hand about themselves doing something heroic, neutral, or evil...
...accepting bribes to cover up a mine disaster in Hebei province that killed 34 miners a little over a month before the start of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. By contrast, the recent rescue at the Wangjialing pit has received close coverage from state-run press. "This kind of heroic rescue operation always gets a lot of coverage in the official Chinese media, but if it's not a success, then the story quickly disappears from the media," says Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based workers' rights NGO. "In this case they did manage...
...national myth is the Epic of Manas, a 500,000-line poem that is 12 times the size of The Odyssey and claimed by some to be one of the few examples of oral literature preserved in its original form for nearly a thousand years. It tells of a heroic warrior, Manas, as he united the Kyrgyz and smote enemy invaders upon the steppe. It's a tale that has been actively propagated within the republic of Kyrgyzstan since its 1991 independence from a crumbling Soviet Union - in 1995, the fledgling state marked Manas' supposed 1,000th birthday with widespread...
...turns out, they might want to wait for Al Gore's next book. McEwan has turned his sharp, satirical eye to climate change, and the result is anything but heroic. In making Solar a comedy - albeit one as black as the dark side of the moon - McEwan gives the lie to vain hopes that the planet will be saved by a sudden outbreak of environmental virtue. If we're going to avoid choking on what McEwan calls the "hot breath of civilization," we're going to have to harness human nature, in all its selfishness, mendacity - and occasional genius...