Word: seemly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Klebold and Harris say on the tapes that they did not want to be seen as copycats and that they were planning their own horror before other school shootings made news. Nevertheless, we had to wrestle with whether running a picture of them might seem, perversely, to glorify them to other twisted minds or give them the publicity they wanted, even though they are dead...
...FASTER by James Gleick. Those who wonder why they never seem to have the leisure to sit back and smell the roses will find plenty of reasons in this lively, irreverent primer on contemporary life. Gleick examines how we became infected with "hurry sickness" and points out that such innovations as cell phones, microwave ovens and the Internet only exacerbate the symptoms. Once a task has been speeded up, going back is hard to do. Try dialing a phone number...
...referred to "a lone British researcher who claimed--somewhat dubiously--that g.m. [genetically modified] potatoes damaged his lab rats." Given the lack of research into the effects of g.m. foods, doesn't it seem odd that the British government would not try to determine whether the g.m. potatoes did or did not damage internal organs and compromise the immune system of rats, if not humans? To me, this is the story. MATTHEW HODGES Cambridge, Mass...
...front-page story in the New York Times last week pointed out that candidates opposing Bush seem intent on implying that he doesn't have wattage sufficient for the job. This is difficult to combat gracefully. By joking about his own temper, John McCain not only helped defuse the issue but also picked up some points for being self-deprecating. In the early Clinton years, Gore managed to seem less like a piece of chain-saw sculpture for a while by going on talk shows to make fun of his own woodenness. But if you're running for President, making...
...least it has seemed so until now. One of the New Republic pieces, by Jonathan Chait, argued that, partly because voters seem to be in a mood to prize personal authenticity over ideas, candidates see some advantage in presenting themselves as, if not flat-out stupid, at least aggressively nonintellectual. It's true that when Bush first got into the race he joked a bit about his academic shortcomings in college, and when his Yale transcript was printed in the New Yorker, the impact on his campaign seemed so negligible that I was moved to write a couplet that went...