Word: mania
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...markdown mania took off as suddenly as a price war on computers or toasters. But the merchandise that went on sale was crude oil. Early last week Norway's state oil company triggered a chain reaction among petroleum exporters by offering its $30-per-bbl. North Sea crude for $28.50. Two days later Britain, a much larger producer, followed suit with a $1.35 cut on its Brent crude, to $28.65. For oil exporters the events were ominously familiar. When Norway and Britain officially discounted their oil in February 1983, the move forced the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries...
...drugs, in fact, promise to re-create the experience of a major mental illness. Marijuana lets you circumnavigate the land of schizophrenia; LSD parachutes you in for the day. Quaaludes and downers promise a languid overnight stay in the Lethean land of depression, cocaine in the energized hothouse of mania...
When faced with the incomprehensible, the average American frequently reaches for the nearest statistic. Computers help promote this national mania by providing an easy way to churn out sometimes dubious quantifications. Last week a Joint Economic Committee study of the effects of the economy on health showed how easily pseudostatistical precision can be taken for fact...
...Janice Castro. Reported by Mania Gauger/New York
...reason for this spate of dangling story lines is hardly a mystery. As fictional characters from Little Nell to Flash Gordon have proved, nothing keeps audience interest perking like an unresolved predicament, followed by the tantalizing line "... to be continued." TV's cliffhanger mania began four years ago, when J.R. was gunned down by a mysterious assailant on the final episode of Dallas' 1979-80 season. After a summer of suspense, the "Who Shot J.R.?" mystery was solved (it was his sister-in-law Kristin) in a segment that drew the largest audience of any TV program...