Word: stressful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Conservatives tend to say, Change the culture. Democrats tend to think of family values as matters that might be addressed by government policy -- which is precisely Dan Quayle's complaint. Conservatives uphold the private realm, Democrats the public realm. Conservatives tend to stress individual responsibility and changing behavior to correct the problem; liberals are inclined to think first of programs to mitigate the bad effects of trends such as unwed motherhood...
...region has been rocked by thousands of nerve-racking aftershocks, and the quake ignited mysterious swarms of smaller earthquakes in volcanic zones hundreds of kilometers away. But most alarming of all, this quake, the largest to hit Southern California in 40 years, appears to have substantially altered subterranean stress fields. In the process, it may have awakened a fitfully sleeping dragon -- the mighty San Andreas, the nation's biggest and most dangerous fault...
What scientists fear is that the southern San Andreas has reached a similarly critical threshold. "If the Landers earthquake put a little stress on the San Andreas," exclaims Allan Lindh, chief seismologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, "then what about the accumulated stress of 300 years of plate motion?" For Lindh and other experts, the Landers quake and its resulting tremors are all too reminiscent of the increased seismic activity that preceded the great San Francisco blowout of 1906. "I mean," says Lindh, with a dramatic pause, "how much more on the edge of our chairs...
...times as many people as there were bunks -- several thousand in all. Only the President, Cabinet Secretaries and Supreme Court Justices had private quarters. Eisenhower had family pictures on his desk. A therapeutic mattress was installed for Kennedy's bad back. For those who could not cope with the stress, the facility had sedatives as well as a padded isolation cell, complete with an observation window. One official dubbed it "the rubber room" and said there were straitjackets on pegs outside the door -- something Gallagher denies. So complete is the site's inventory that it now includes birth-control pills...
...plot of "Strangers on Earth" is somewhat weak; the play is carried by frequent one-liners, often in series. Mutt, commenting on the disastrous effects of alcohol, notes that "Absolut corrupts absolutely." Margaret, dealing with the stress of losing a job by shopping, observes: "When things get tough, the tough get things." A wide variety of puns liven up a script that might otherwise be lifeless...