Word: modicum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...disease caused by the cruel depredations of an outlaw regime possibly welcome back the architects of such madness? It is one of the saddest ironies in Cambodia today that the Khmer Rouge, whose reign of terror lasted from 1975 to 1979, have clawed their way back to a modicum of power. As the country's first democratic balloting in three decades begins this week, the party threatening to wreck the election is none other than the Khmer Rouge. Hope that the vote might usher in peace, along with a constitution and new government, has given way to fear that...
...increased from a handful to about 20 per house. I know that Harvard students are given to melodramatic exaggeration of their neuroses, but retaining one full time resident tutor for every 20 students is excessive. One could make the case that resident tutors keep the peace and insure a modicum of discipline. But considering Harvard's dormant social scene, such a task could not keep more than one nights per week. Indeed, the place where I seem to run into tutors the most is on the keg line at parties...
...more widespread than even romantics imagined. Those who argue that love is a cultural fantasy have tended to do so from a Eurocentric and class-driven point of view. Romance, they say, arose thanks to amenities peculiar to the West: leisure time, a modicum of creature comforts, a certain level of refinement in the arts and letters. When these trappings are absent, so is romance. Peasants mated; aristocrats fell in love...
...better world lies would not be necessary at all, since the truth would be self-evident and foolish to deny or attempt to refute. The world we have discourages such certainties. Lies will continue to be told, as will the difficulty of recognizing them as such. But some modicum of trust will probably also survive, as it has through notable periods of lying in the past. When the perception of lying grows too acute, some shift, some click in the social consciousness, takes place: Danger ahead. The bad, suspicious mood of this political year is a sign of health...
...starvation, disease or gunfire, the state is not just weak -- it has virtually ceased to exist. When the people see themselves as victims rather than beneficiaries of the system, they have little use for the ballot box and little regard for constitutional procedure. All they want is a modicum of safety, equity and discipline, which is what Fujimori and the Peruvian military are promising...