Word: myths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...next day, history rose up and growled. And with that the testing began. Sometimes the greater the tragedy, the easier it is to learn wrong lessons from it: truth turns into myth, mortals into heroes, luck into fate, scars into badges. It is hard for the fire fighters, brave as they are, to be greeted as heroes everywhere they go, proposed to in bars, showered with gifts, when in private they know that many of them cannot sleep and cannot think and cannot find words longer than two syllables, and on the days they don't wake up feeling terrible...
...watch the tape that bin Laden may be like one of those not quite bright real-life hoods who strut around with the Godfather movies unreeling in their minds, the theme music playing in their inner ears; Al Pacino has given them the dialogue, a myth of themselves. Bin Laden is the John Gotti of jihad...
...three-quarters view, in imitation of Flemish painting. (There had been a big vogue in Florence for artists like Hans Memling and Petrus Christus.) This shift is just beginning in Botticelli's portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, but her pearl-encrusted beauty still has the idealized remoteness of myth. From the turn toward the viewer's eye would be born the modern idea of portraiture as the making of a "speaking likeness"--speaking, that is, to a viewer, rather than holding itself aloof. But absolute truth to nature? That remains a fiction now, as it was then...
Information technology managers at 150 U.S. companies reported a spike in printing after they opened access to their firms' data networks, according to The Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper. Long e-mail messages and attachments tend to be printed, causing about a 40% jump in paper consumption when an office first gets e-mail. But e-mail also cuts down on workers' use of expensive overnight mail and courier services...
...into the dust, the battle is on for the choice symbols of power. Omar's house, with its sentimental frescoes of waterfalls and flowers and plastic bedroom chandeliers, may not fit Karzai's urbane, westernized tastes. But Karzai is canny enough to know the importance of destroying the Afghan myth of Omar, the one-eyed visionary who conversed with the Prophet Mohammed in his dreams. And part of that destruction involves camping in Omar's kitsch mansion, and letting a common sentry snooze in his bed. "You should see the place," says Karzi, nearly rolling his eyes...