Word: reflexivity
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...everyone sees the Rothko comparison as a compliment. A Hindustan Times column sniffed that it is a patronizing "reflex of lost Empire" to praise ancient Indian painters through the works of modern Western ones. "The British Museum is a robber's cave and testimonial to the 'engulf and devour' Western worldview that Asia and Africa know intimately to their considerable cost," the column continued. True, the British Museum and Kew Gardens were founded in the 1750s, when Britain bestrode the world. But in a year when a Bollywood-style movie triumphed at the Oscars, when pundits have taken to warning...
Obama may also have been helped by a higher tolerance for calamity. After a winter of market mayhem, job losses and pirate attacks, our panic reflex may have toughened up a bit. We are always on alert now: the threat level is forever orange; the Internet fizzes with warnings and advice. This time, thousands of students stayed home from school in Texas, disrupting a day of standardized state tests, while in New York City, pharmacies reported a run on Tamiflu...
...reason for Obama's election and high approval ratings is his privileging of the empirical and pragmatic ahead of ideological reflex. We have not, of course, arrived in a golden age of fair-minded, intellectually honest postpartisanship, as proved by the congressional votes on the stimulus package and the redoubled ferocity of brain-dead partisans. But a majority of Americans out in America are dialing back or turning off their ideological autopilots, thanks to the economic crises, Obama's approach and the post-Cold War realities. With the Soviet Union gone and China socialist in name only, the specter...
...little bag of marbles and a catapult wound around my fingers” show the narrator conflating the playthings of kids and grownups, reframing medieval warfare as simple schoolyard mischief. If the saccharine sweetness of The Boy Least Likely To doesn’t trigger your gag reflex, there is plenty to be enjoyed here. Their musical arrangements are hyperactive and original, and their lyrics turn a critical eye towards the cutesy aesthetic of the twee tradition from which the band emerged. The band practically begs to be mocked; in fact, their self-identification with...
...Blaming Pakistan is almost a reflex among Indian politicians; they have been right - and they have been wrong. Pakistan has been accused of promoting the Punjab insurgency in the 1990s (its leaders were Indian Sikhs) and in more recent bombings that have since been pinned on Indian jihadis or, in one case, a Hindu nationalist group. In the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistan link is more substantial: the one suspect who was captured alive and arrested, Ajmal Amir Kasab, has been identified by Indian authorities as Pakistani. (The other nine suspects were killed by police.) U.S. intelligence officials have pointed...