Word: present
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...clash had seemed innocuous enough. Unveiled last summer, the package called for restructuring the country's 78 universities to make them more competitive. Each institution ! would be allowed to tighten its admission standards, increase its fees slightly (now less than $100 a year) and grant its own diplomas. At present, all those who pass the tough baccalaureat exam, which is given after secondary school, are guaranteed admission to a university on a first-come, first-served basis. Upon graduation from the university, students receive "national" diplomas that do not identify the school attended...
...them all: the parents from their wallets. More interested in the here-and-now bottom line than in fairy tales or the mythic wellsprings behind children's play, the marketers have long since phased out the elves in Santa's workshop (and kicked the old gentleman upstairs to his present role as the Colonel Sanders of the Yuletide franchise). Big business, after all, is not kid stuff; the other way round is more like it. In the U.S. last Christmas, according to the ledgers of the Wall Street Journal, "the average household bought 30 gifts and spent...
...little votive objects of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as the creche miniatures of Europe in the Middle Ages. Even the cheapest five- and-dime figurine is kin to the priceless Japanese ceremonial dolls that museums covet and to the feminine miniatures some African peoples still present to adolescent girls when they reach sexual maturity...
...drawing antiwar newspaper cartoons urging parents to boycott playthings with violent themes. Says Bob Staake: "Our art asks America to put Gumby, not Rambo, under the Christmas tree. At a time when we are supposed to be celebrating peace, it seems insane to turn war into a Christmas present...
Some Reagan Administration officials predict that the contra program will not be irremediably damaged by the current scandal. They observe that there is no movement afoot at present to halt payment of the remaining $40 million in U.S. aid. "I think when this is all over, Congress will still be willing to back the program," Elliott Abrams said earlier this month. "We have a huge national interest in promoting democracy there." Oklahoma Republican Mickey Edwards pressed the point further in a Washington Post op-ed piece. The Congressman exhorted his legislative brethren to remember that they had approved contra...