Word: supermans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Moses and Superman With the rise of secularism and the declining influence of the Bible in the 20th century, Moses might have melted away as a role model. But something curious happened. He was so identified as a hero of the American Dream that he superseded Scripture and entered the realm of popular culture, from novels to television...
...Superman was modeled partly on Moses. The comic-book hero's creators, two bookish Jews from Cleveland named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, drew their character's backstory from the superhero of the Torah. Just as baby Moses is floated down the Nile in a basket to escape annihilation, baby Superman is launched into space in a rocket ship to avoid extinction. Just as Moses is raised in an alien world before being summoned to liberate Israel, Superman is raised in an alien environment before being called to assist humanity...
...years into the Great Recession, it's time to face the truth: optimism feels good, really good, but it turns out to be the methamphetamine of run-amok American capitalism. Meth induces a "Superman syndrome." Optimism fed into what Steve Eisman, a banking analyst who foresaw the crash, calls "hedge-fund disease," characterized by "megalomania, plus narcissism, plus solipsism" and the belief that "to think something is to make it happen." The meth-head loses his teeth and his mind; the madcap optimists of Wall Street lost something like $10 trillion worth of pension funds, life savings and retirement accounts...
...story through the eyes of a the main narrator as in the original Mahabharata, Sreedharan takes the point of view of an heretofore one- dimensional character, Bhima, one of the five Pandava brothers who defeat their cousins, the Kauravas, in tale's central battle. "Bhima has been the brawny superman of Mahabharata," says the Indian-born academic and journalist. "Here he is being presented as someone who is really sensitive and intelligent." (Watch TIME's video "Twitter Poetry on the Plinth in London...
Once a month the news gods have delivered these parables to us, gifts in a gold box reminding us where value lies. It's so much better to discover that Superman could be anyone; that everywhere you look, there are hidden reserves of majesty and honor and genius and luck. The stories wouldn't have worked if Susan Boyle had been a yuppie barrister or Phillips a SEAL himself. Their normality gives them wings...