Word: knowing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...always wanted porn-star friends. I figured they'd know not only where all the good parties were but also where to buy fetching outfits for my female friends. But it turns out they know about something far more exciting than sex: money. Orgies are great and all, but they're a little early '99, a little Eyes Wide Shut, if you know what I mean. If I find a woman who can point me toward the next AOL, then I'm a man in search of a diamond ring...
...Hollywood style--brash, chatty, muscular--is the only one most moviegoers know. But there is another, sparer sort, where penetrating gazes take the place of explosive technical virtuosity. It is caviar to the Hollywood popcorn, and for 40 years ROBERT BRESSON was its finest and most influential purveyor. In 13 features from Les Anges du Peche (1943) to L'Argent (1983), the Frenchman who called himself a "jolly pessimist" went his own thorny way and, through his severe, seductive example, established the dominant style of a minority art form. His films, with little dialogue and music, are in effect silent...
Roosevelt, scarcely an exemplar of humility, nonetheless saved the possibility of governmental humility from the forces of utopian and dystopian arrogance. Totalitarian systems--whether fascist or communist--believe that those in charge know what's best for everyone else. But leaders who nurture democracy and freedom--who allow folks to make their own choices rather than dictating them from on high--are being laudably humble, an attitude that the 20th century clearly rewarded and one that is necessary for creating humane societies...
...know now, however, that it is Einstein's theory that ultimately fails. On extremely fine scales, space-time, and thus reality itself, becomes grainy and discontinuous, like a badly overmagnified newspaper photograph. The equations of general relativity simply can't handle such a situation, where the laws of cause and effect break down and particles jump from point A to point B without going through the space in between. In such a world, you can only calculate what will probably happen next--which is just what quantum theory is designed...
...this has nothing to do with relativity, but it had much to do with Einstein's contemplation of relativity. Einstein became the emblem not only of the desire to know the truth but also of the capacity to know the truth. In his 1993 novel, Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman writes, "In this world time is a visible dimension. Just as one may look off in the distance and see houses, trees, mountain peaks that are landmarks in space, so one may look out in another direction and see births, marriages, deaths that are signposts in time, stretching off dimly...