Word: phenomenon
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Leadership at Harvard is an interesting phenomenon. In a community with unheard of number of per capita high school class presidents, no one is used to or satisfied with being "just a member." We all aspire to lead, to plan and to be in charge. And, if you cannot rise the ranks of your organization, the natural response is to start your own. Joe, though, defies our traditional perception of the Harvard leader. On a recent afternoon, I ate lunch with Joe to catch up on various aspects of our lives. I inquired about the pressures and responsibilities...
...permit ourselves a divergence, of some thousands of miles, to Australia (that quaint, puzzling country that just voted overwhelmingly to keep their Queen), the Pauline Hanson phenomenon provides an illuminating analogy. Hanson--the red-headed fish-and-chip shop lady--shows what can happen to right-wing extremists unhinged from a main-stream party machine. Hanson came to fame in 1996 with her maiden speech in the House of Representatives, shattering the "political correctness" consensus of the last decade and rocketing herself to political infamy. She then went on to the form the (somewhat ironically titled) One Nation Party...
...mean that the United States can afford to be complacent. On the contrary, Australia's lesson has been that it is not the political damage that ultimately counts. It is, rather, the social damage. The multicultural, tolerant fabric of Australian society was seriously damaged by the One Nation phenomenon in 1996-99. Racial violence and tension escalated during this time, and even though Hanson is essentially out of the picture, Australia is still grappling with these issues...
...phenomenon is influencing historical fiction. Even men are catching on to the imaginative possibilities. Earlier this year Ron Hansen dug deep for Hitler's Niece, a novel that cast the teenage Geli Rabaul as Lolita to the Fuhrer's Humbert Humbert...
...ever aware of it, but one nostril is always pulling in a tiny bit more air than the other, the result of minute swelling in the nasal lining that switches from one side to the other every few hours. The phenomenon has seemed to be little more than an anatomical curiosity...