Word: pendulum
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...years later, the outcome of that conservative swing in the pendulum will be reviewed as Harvard's celebrated Core Curriculum undergoes a faculty and administrative review. While not expected to call for broad revision or fundamental change, the assessment will represent Harvard's latest statement on what makes an "educated person...
...editors become convinced that they can somehow unravel the Templars' scheme if they put a secret map under Foucault's pendulum, a device invented by the 19th century physicist Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault to measure the earth's rotation. The pendulum, which still stands in Paris today, will supposedly indicate a site at which the earth's vital currents can be controlled, earthquakes can be created...
That bizarre scenario might seem impossible for even a semiotician to duplicate. But guess again. Eco has produced another novel, Foucault's Pendulum, which has sold more than half a million copies in Italy since it was published last October and at one point outsold the next highest best seller by 15 to 1. Translation rights have been assigned in 24 countries, and an English version by William Weaver will be published in the U.S. next October. Once again the Italian press has orchestrated what it calls Ecomania with cries of delight and outrage. One newspaper praised Foucault's Pendulum...
...least odd aspect of the affair is that Foucault's Pendulum is not so much a thriller as a complicated parable that contains pages and pages of erudite details about such medieval phenomena as the Knights Templar, the Cathars and the Order of Assassins. And Eco steadfastly refuses to explain what his mysterious novel is all about. "This was a book conceived to irritate the reader," he says in his drafty university office, lighting up another of the 60 cigarettes he puffs every day. "I knew it would provoke ambiguous, nonhomogeneous responses because it was a book conceived to point...
...pendulum swung last Sunday night, as it may several times again before the election. Michael Dukakis, whose campaign had been moribund since the Democratic Convention, reasserted his voice at the first of two 90-minute showdowns -- and while his overconfident debater's style may be grating, he consistently displayed his mastery of both the forensic arts and substance. George Bush, while certainly the warmer and more user-friendly of the two, appeared at the same time to be hesitant, disconnected and too often on the defensive...