Word: pasts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Judeo-Christian West, however, time is a line, marching steadily from the past to the future. As Lippencott puts it, "God never moves backward." Deward Walker, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argues that this way of viewing time is "part of the reason we have such an advanced science, technology and economy, such mastery of nature and dominance of the universe...
Everything else--including space and time, which he melded into a single entity called space-time--is relative, as malleable as rubber. The Big Bang theory further established that space-time came into existence at a definite point in the past. Talking about what happened "before" the Big Bang is meaningless--as absurd as talking about what lies north of the North Pole...
...decades now, especially in the past couple of years, black actors have complained about being snubbed for starring roles on TV. So after the TV networks announced their fall lineups last spring, Kweisi Mfume arrived in Hollywood with his own script proposal. The N.A.A.C.P. president cast himself as the leading man, a swaggering yet politically correct Terminator of all things racist about Tinseltown. His first mission: to strong-arm the networks into hiring more minorities to work in front of and behind the cameras. Mfume's early salvos had the fire of civil rights rhetoric...
Still, the campaign is about to bear at least some fruit. Following a series of meetings between network chiefs and N.A.A.C.P. officials in Baltimore over the past couple of weeks, the four networks are close to an agreement to implement a series of diversity initiatives, while the N.A.A.C.P. has all but dropped its boycott threat. Mfume seems to have realized that old-line civil rights tactics of boycotts and picket lines hold less sway on the Left Coast than power lunches and air kisses. What finally worked was the same back-room conciliatory politics that made Mfume a force...
...diversity agreement would signal a major effort to go beyond such quick fixes. It would also score a much needed victory for the N.A.A.C.P., which has spent much of the past decade dogged by financial woes, an embarrassing sex scandal and a dimmed place on the national political radar. Mfume, 51, has been lauded for putting the organization back on solid financial footing and increasing its sagging membership rolls. But he has been criticized for failing to steer the organization into such controversial issues as affirmative action and welfare reform...