Word: rituals
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...habit of going out of their way to satisfy the voyeuristic impulses of a morbidly curious public. Perhaps there's simply some bureaucratic sense of duty to record the minutiae of a condemned person's last day on earth. Or perhaps our culture has evolved this ritual of the ? la carte last meal to sugarcoat what remains a grim act of violence by the state to redress a previous wrong. After all, in some countries, a condemned man's last meal is whatever the prison kitchen happens to be serving that day, and death is by firing squad rather...
...political and military elites - and that's worked to Suharto's advantage. Even if convicted on corruption charges, he's already been guaranteed a pardon by the beleaguered President Abdurrahman Wahid, in a sign of the tenuous balance of forces in a country where politicians still live dangerously. The ritual humiliation of Suharto through a trial without punishment may even be a safety valve to protect Wahid from pressure to pursue military leaders for past human rights abuses. Still, Suharto has no enthusiasm for the ritual, and is professing illness...
...conventions, by contrast, you'll see a micro-managed pageant that plumbs the depths of banality in search of narrative elements that camouflage two ambitious sons of America's power elite as salt-of-the-earth common folk. The ritual of the convention is designed to "show" the candidate winning the considered endorsement of the party faithful, but it's been so stripped of any space for real political cut and thrust that it's a little like watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" with contestants reading the answers off a visible TelePrompTer. There's about as much drama...
...inaction on debt relief," it became readily apparent that you won't exactly impress friends or chat up that attractive account executive at the weekend barbecue recounting the drama of the summit, no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars the Japanese government is spending on this annual ritual. Instead, I offer the following tidbits that should be immediately inserted into conversation as soon as there is even the slightest hint of any summit talk...
...used to have a pretty solid ritual that I would perform every morning at my computer. I'd get some coffee, log on and surf through CNN, the New York Times, Wired News, CNET, Slashdot and Time.com. These days I log on to one URL and pour my coffee while the page loads. By the time I return to my desk, every site on my daily list is ready to scroll through - no go-and-fetch web browsing one site at a time...