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...spontaneous comments. At the University of Geneva, Raisa, a Ph.D. in Marxism-Leninism who has lectured in Communist theory at Moscow State University, startled the rector by engaging him in a conversation about the relationship between philosophy and physics. At a clock museum, she jokingly inquired whether one ceremonial item was a Swiss watch; the director sheepishly admitted it was French. Raisa Gorbachev also demonstrated a beguiling bilingualism. Fingering a jeweled antique timepiece, she displayed it to U.S. television camera crews and warbled in accented English...
...dramatic growth in museum-store sales partly reflects the sheer variety of products. These range from the sublime to the slightly ridiculous. Staple items include postcards, calendars, notecards and posters. Beyond that, the potpourri is far less predictable. At the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut one can buy a wooden handcrafted model of a ship ($10,000). Shoppers at Boston's Museum of Science store can take home a tiny piece of the moon, complete with a lunar map locating the crater from which the rock was taken. The single best-selling item in the Smithsonian stores...
...American delegate to the U.N. Disarmament Commission, offered a set of guidelines that included "the dead" of all instruments adaptable to mass destruction." Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1959 declared Moscow's support for "general and complete disarmament." The phrase became a staple of Soviet pronouncements and a regular item on the U.N. agenda, though the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have never quite been able to agree on what it means, much less how to achieve...
...test, mandated by the Texas legislature in 1984 as part of a broad program to improve the state's public schools, was not terribly difficult. (Sample item: spotting the misspelled word "discused" in a paragraph.) But teachers reacted with outrage. "It's the wrong instrument to measure my ability," said Mary Lee Reyna, a first-grade teacher in San Antonio. "If I am incompetent, you'd think they would have found me out in 23 years. The only way you can tell if I'm a competent teacher is to come see me in my classroom." Harold Massey, executive director...
...This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item." ERROR MESSAGE appearing on the mainland Chinese version of Microsoft's MSN Spaces blog site when a user enters words such as "democracy," "freedom," "human rights" or "Taiwan independence." A Microsoft spokesperson said the company is abiding by Chinese laws...