Word: inertia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...only by representing the foreign ideas in Chinese characters, yet the Chinese characters have their own meaning already. Our current research finds that foreign ideas have come into Chinese most easily when the Chinese have already had the same general idea. The writing system makes for continuity and inertia in Chinese ways. Unlike Japan, Korea, or Vietnam, who all had a phonetic writing system combined with Chinese characters, the Chinese cannot take in foreign words purely by transcribing their sound even today...
...students answered my questions. It reflected a tendency among most of them to think and talk a great deal about taking drugs, and unconsciously construct arguments to defend their habit against the legal and social bans imposed by society. Obtaining drugs is a positive act which goes against the inertia of legal constraints--to ignore the restrictions requires some internal debate. Having decided that drugs were worth it, the students interviewed took particular pains to describe drug-induced sensations which defy verbal cliches. To the majority, pot manifests itself through dizzy spells and then painful awakenings; it made...
...poles melts, releasing water into the world's oceans. The mass of ice near the earth's axis of rotation is reduced, and the amount of water in the oceans (which are farther from the axis) is increased. As a result, the earth's moment of inertia becomes greater and-like a twirling ice skater who moves his arms out from his body -its speed of rotation decreases...
Carnovsky's control is never more evident than in Lear's physical senility. The king flings an arm upward to be imperous, but the fingers tremble in the stagelight. A fist shaken in anger seems to swing limply for an eternity as Lear's age vainly fights inertia. The movements are often ungainly or painfully awkward. Carnovsky is never afraid to make Lear look ridiculous...
...that never left." But two straight crushing defeats nearly dispirited him. "Stevenson came along too soon," he lamented in 1957. "Americans, after a generation's buffeting by depression and war, had to have a breathing spell. Even by 1956 they had not had their fill of inertia...