Word: sterne
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stern poetic thought publicly expanding recklessly imaginative mathematical inventiveness, openmindedness unconditionally superfecundating nonantagonistical hypersophisticated interdenominational interpenetrabilities. This pyramid of words, each one a letter longer than the one above, is a snowball sentence. Read with care, from top to bottom, it actually makes sense. As difficult to compose as they are to pronounce, sentences like these are common coinages of OuLiPo-an abbreviation of Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Workshop of Potential Literature). OuLiPo's 17 members - all Paris-based writers and scientists - meet once a month at well-lubricated lunches to discuss the creation of new literary...
...fairly sober issues. A thoughtful chapter on how the deaf can build a rewarding religious life outlines a sign-language worship service. Another section, on blindness, includes a Hebrew alphabet in braille. Other entries grapple with the ethical problems of premarital sex, contraception and abortion, trying to adapt the stern proscriptions of the Torah to more modern attitudes. Jewish divorce laws, for example, are weighted heavily in favor of the husband, making it difficult for the wife to start proceedings. The Catalog suggests ways to balance the inequality. "The important thing isn't whether or not you observe...
...when one asks how one is to understand Korean economics and society without all that has been fumigated, and dares observe that Korea's own documentation and cultural emphasis lay precisely in the omitted areas, the annoyed retort lays chief store on the importance of ready cash. Harvard's stern and parsimonious forebears must somehow find sleep through the plashing of somewhat tainted gold. Seoul's terms are 'strings' indeed...
...squabbling factions trying to settle old scores with political enemies. Whatever the reason, stringent measures are being taken to suppress troublemakers, who have been denounced as "criminal gangs." Earlier Hua was forced to send 12,000 troops into Fukien province to deal with "sabotage." From Yunnan last week came stern warnings that "we must resolutely suppress the counterrevolutionaries who beat, wreck and loot...
...commission did not find fault with the honor code in principle: "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do." However, it urged some sharp modifications of the stern system. At present, it is all or nothing: if a cadet fibs about anything, however trivial, out he goes. But the system has broken down. The commission estimated that far more than the 152 juniors who were dismissed from West Point for cheating on an electrical engineering exam last spring were actually involved...