Word: notional
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ALTHOUGH many of his ideas are absurd, they are all interesting. For instance, Toffler prefaced his stormy-weather warnings by questioning the validity of science and knowledge as our society conceives it. The modern notion of causality, Toffler proferred, may be nothing more than an unprovable idea that would quite predictably emanate from any highly industrial, interdependent society victimized by a time fetish. The linear consumption of time--which gave rise to society's belief in causality--is just the type of idea one would expect a society run by clocks to adopt. Modern society, Toffler contends, is quite narrow...
...born cynic, I never actually believed in Santa Claus, of course. There were just too many fat, cheery elves in stores and street corners for me to buy the notion that a single Santa ran the whole show. It wasn't until I got to Harvard that my roommates, fools that they were, were convinced by their parents that this red-suited troupe was only a paunch subalterns for the real thing, and that the head honcho would make his annual appearance down the chimney on Christmas Eve. (I also never believed than an amazingly fat man could squeen down...
...Wednesday would be Gay Wednesday. Gay people should wear jeans, and straight people should wear "something else," the signs said. The ostensible purpose was to make gay people visible or detectable to enable them to meet each other. In fact, Gay Wednesday was a neat ploy to parody the notion that "you can tell" who's gay. The event tried to get straights to think about their prejudices for a day by making them sweat about whether people would think they were gay, and wonder why that should make them sweat...
...large; Cecilia Apodaca, wife of the Governor, was a delegate from New Mexico; the West Vir ginia delegation included Sharon Rockefeller, the Governor's wife. At Houston, Helen Milliken, wife of Michigan's Governor, declared herself "a newly proclaimed feminist?I used to think it was a bad notion...
Airlines and communications satellites foster the impression that the rest of the world is just around the corner. Many people derive cozy feelings from this notion of a shrinking globe. But in others, the concept gives rise to claustrophobia. They need a planet that still holds inaccessible places, both beautiful and stubbornly impervious to the designs of man. Author John McPhee has good news for these true believers. He has discovered such a place, and this book is his report...