Word: spanned
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...been released from prison after serving four years for beating a girlfriend to death, Franz has few resources of intelligence or nobility upon which to build a decent new life. He is dull and heavy, a Zolaesque human beast, but less a villain than a big lug. His attention span is so short he cannot even hold a grudge. He feels no remorse for the wrong he has done, no vengeance toward those who have wronged him. His life is determined by forces-of personality, of society, of fate-he has neither the will nor the power to control...
...That span of trust and confidence is made of real girders. The U.S. is now Japan's most important trading partner. Together, the two countries account for nearly half of all production outside the Communist bloc. With 119 U.S. bases and 51,550 American troops on its soil, Japan has become the keystone of U.S. defense strategy in the Pacific. When the U.S. called on its allies to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Japan was among the first to join. It also followed the U.S. lead in imposing economic sanctions against Poland...
...Their isolated efforts are now being denounced as "smother love" and blamed by professionals for the intractability of the young. Furthermore, even the most dedicated kyoiku-mama (education mamma) finds that the years spent doggedly nagging her two children toward success take up far less of her life span than it did of her grandmother's, who probably had five children and died, on average, 30 years younger...
Eddie Murphy is the first of skitcom's major mimics to span the gap. On SNL he presents a roster of hilariously varied characters. One minute he is Little Richard Simmons, finding just the right comic fusion-effeminate yet macho-of the rock-'n'-roll screamer and the Liberace of aerobics ("Good golly, Miss Molly, you look like a hog!"). The next he is Velvet Jones, a pomaded pimp, with teeth like sheathed knives, huckstering his how-to books for young ladies, I Wanna Be a Ho and Exercises of Love. Now he is Tyrone Green...
Lost in the Cosmos turns this brain-twisting topic into a sort of game show. Percy's questions span what he calls the deranged world from Descartes to "Dear Abby." The reader is provided multiple-choice answers. None are wrong, but some are more correct than others. Sample question: "If you are a shy person, is it better to accept your shyness, or to seek help from a psychotherapist?" Sample answers: "It is better to seek help from a psychotherapist because it is better not to suffer than to suffer ... It is better to read a book about...