Word: modernity
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General anesthesia - the enabler of modern surgery and medical intervention - is one of the great triumphs of the scientific method. Ether, the compound from which almost all modern anesthetics are derived, was discovered largely by luck and its derivatives through trial and error. As a result, however, much about these drugs remains mysterious. Even today, doctors are baffled as to why exactly anesthetics cause unconsciousness in patients. (See the most common hospital mishaps...
English 154 grapples with this same idea. “Sexuality” has gradually displaced “soul,” “mind,” and “character” as the most essential and salient ingredient in modern subjectivity, as the “truth of the self,” reads the course description. Temporary physical pleasure now outwits the soul, reason, and virtue. Gone are the days when we place value on condemning its consequences, though many conspicuously refuse to participate...
Suicide bombing is one of the trickiest and least understood methods of modern warfare. The tactic has existed in various forms since the 17th century, when Dutch soldiers used gunpowder to blow themselves and their enemies up to avoid being taken prisoner in Taiwan. Since then, suicide attacks have steadily been on the rise, surging more than 300% since 2001, leaving defense experts and government officials struggling to effectively counter their devastating spread. In his new book Dying for Heaven, Georgetown University religion professor Ariel Glucklich describes the religious, social and psychological motivations behind this disturbing phenomenon, the frightening ways...
...half of 2008 - and as a result accumulated a massive load of foreign exchange, which it turned around and loaned, mostly to the U.S. government, which enabled Americans to go on borrowing and spending. China, policymakers said, intended to break this unhealthy cycle. (See pictures of the making of modern China...
...Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by President Obama on Oct. 28, represents both the best and the worst of the modern-day civil rights movement. Given the current legal framework, it was outrageous that crimes committed against individuals due to their sexual orientation were excluded from the roster of hate crimes. By correcting this injustice, the Shepard Act accomplished something important. However, the act also upholds and perpetuates the noxious notion that crimes ought to be weighted by the nebulous standard of “hate?...