Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There is a time in every young reader's life when the works of D.H. Lawrence strike with the force of revelation. His novels can leave you transformed (at least temporarily) by his visionary social criticism and his earnest reflections on the endless struggle for a transfiguring sexuality. Ken Russell's adaptation of The Rainbow is faithful not only to Lawrence's spirit but also to the naive idealism he was (one hopes still is) capable of animating in eager, youthful hearts...
...Social standing is always relative. To the hardscrabble peasants down in the Irish village of Ballybeg, the clan in the big house on the hill is the nobility. But at Ballybeg Hall the members of that gilded tribe are keenly aware of a wider world and their piddling place in it. They glamourize the past: a tatty cushion or tarnished candlestick becomes an heirloom by reason of a (probably fictitious) anecdotal link to some bygone celebrity. They embroider the dismal present. They deny the looming future of dissolution and dispersal...
...West German elections in 1990. But the Chancellor's popularity at home has sagged recently, and his center-right coalition is threatened by discontent over widely criticized tax and health reforms. In an almost desperate attempt to regain ground, he has adopted the negotiate-now attitude of the Social Democratic opposition and of his coalition partner, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. When Kohl sent two ministers to Washington to explain his reversal, they were met icily, even though Kohl has long been the West German politician closest to Washington...
...limits to the care they could expect. The measure, now before the lower house, would also establish a commission of experts and consumers to rank health services in order of importance; the legislature would then decide which to finance. Oregon has already set up committees of doctors, nurses and social workers to & establish priorities in four medical categories covered by Medicaid. Prenatal care, nutrition, immunizations, birth control and abortions rank high on the lists, while organ transplants and cosmetic surgery have been given low priority...
...projected 35 million by the year 2000. Callahan also blames high-tech research for producing ingenious new operations that remain astronomically pricey even as they become popular and desirable. He proposes a slowdown on developing gimmicky procedures like artificial hearts and a more careful review of their social and economic consequences. Says he: "We keep inventing new ways to spend money, and that complicates things...