Word: modernism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...produce genius is a very old question, one that has occupied philosophers since antiquity. In the modern era, Immanuel Kant and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton wrote extensively about how genius occurs. Last year, pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell addressed the subject in his book Outliers: The Story of Success...
...prospect of chemical and biological warfare in this age of anthrax scares and WMD can feel - like the threat of nuclear Armageddon before it - like a uniquely modern terror. But a British archaeologist's recent find offers a reminder that chemical weapons are nothing new - in fact, they are nearly 2,000 years old. Simon James, a researcher at the University of Leicester in the U.K., claims to have found the first physical evidence of chemical weaponry, dating from a battle fought in A.D. 256 at an ancient Roman fortress. James concluded that 20 Roman soldiers unearthed beneath the town...
...caused a stir in archaeological circles, bringing to light proof of deeds usually encountered just in classical texts. Conducting a CSI-style cold-case forensic analysis of the site, James pieced together clues from records of earlier excavations at the Roman city of Dura-Europos, whose ruins are in modern Syria. An army of Persians had sacked the city and abandoned it, deporting its captive population deep into Persian territory. Dura-Europos became a ghost town, engulfed in sand until joint French-American teams dug it up in the 1930s. (Read TIME's cover story on a different kind...
...south of ancient Tyre. A Chinese ruler in A.D. 178 put down a peasant revolt by encircling the rebels with chariots heaped with limestone powder. Accompanied by a cacophonous troupe of drummers, the charioteers pumped the powder into a primitive tear gas even more corrosive and lethal than its modern equivalent. The peasants didn't stand a chance. (Read "Could Israel Face War Crimes Charges Over Gaza...
...famous Declaration of Conscience against McCarthyism - with Senator Joe McCarthy sitting only three seats behind her in the chamber. Maine doesn't bend easily to the prevailing political winds. Locals take a perverse pride in the fact that no other state has voted more consistently for the loser in modern presidential elections. And while they voted for Obama last fall and for the Democrat in every presidential election since 1988, Collins won her re-election race in 2008 with a margin 6 points larger than Obama's in Maine...