Word: mediums
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...park bench, one white and one black, sit swapping stories. No premise could be simpler, no setting more static. But because the theater is ultimately a medium of language, of narrative, a skilled playwright can find in just such a conversation all the action an audience needs. The result can be poignant and elegiac, like David Storey's Home, or salty and burlesque, like David Mamet's Duck Variations, or full of rage and silences, like many of Beckett's dramas...
...long ago it was generally supposed that one kind of building was suitable to almost every modern purpose. Corporate offices? Put up a plain box, a big one. A university? Put up a couple of plain boxes, medium size. A civic building? Another box, and make it bland...
There was none, of course. Romantic kissing was permissible sex, an intimacy that could be accomplished while fully clothed, even when dressed in tuxedo or ballgown. Kissing is, among other things, a subtle and civilized medium of expression. It is a preliminary and surrogate for sex, an enticement that is also provisional. Kissing is a promise that preserves the right of refusal. A kiss is mute, and highly articulate. It involves a brief fusion of two heads, the head being the residence of mind and soul. The mouth is simultaneously the front office of language and of hunger. The kiss...
...name. International Harvester, which last year sold its farm-implement business to the J I Case division of Tenneco, emerged from a nine-month-long name-lift operation as Navistar International. The new name, a blend of navigate and star, refers to the company's remaining line of business--medium and heavy trucks--and its goal of stellar performance...
...then had to stand down in the face of opposition from the U.S. With the possible exception of the Falklands war, no major foreign military expedition has been launched by the European countries. They have tended to opt out of first-rank international leadership, accept their demotion to medium-size power status and grudgingly leave responsibility for their defense to the U.S. This sometimes comfortable, sometimes melancholy provincialization of Western Europe has led to a softness on terrorism and reluctance to take action...