Word: swording
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...such effects geniuses as Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen -- is just a decade old. The Disney film TRON, which took place inside a video game, was the first to explore the new technique. In the Steven Spielberg-produced Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), a computer-generated knight wielding a sword leaped out of a stained-glass window and menaced a priest. Morphing, the big news in special effects, made its debut in Willow (1988): a reclining tiger is smoothly transformed into a sleeping woman...
More than three decades ago, Begin wrote that the struggle to create the state of Israel could be summed up in a single sentence: "We fight, therefore we are." If the fighter had finally laid down his sword, Menachem Begin's role in the battle would be remembered -- and hotly debated -- for years to come...
...really? Try telling that to Denmark, whose anthem graphically commemorates the exploits of King Christian: "His sword was hammering so fast/ Through Gothic helm and brain it passed." Or the Chinese, whose national ditty is a paean to the prospect of "using our flesh and blood to build a new Great Wall." Guatemalans are admonished never to permit "tyrants to spit in thy face." And who could forget the immortal words in the second verse of the Bulgarian national song: "Countless warriors bravely die/ For the people's sacred cause." Such a roster would be incomplete without the heady draught...
...Confederate sword in his hand and a white Stetson hat on his head, Pat Buchanan stands in front of the Alamo. "Take a look behind me," the Republican challenger tells the friendly crowd. "Those fellows put Texas first. They put their own freedom first. They put their own families first, and they were willing to stand up and fight and die for it." Buchanan's own candidacy may face a similar fate, but he hopes his quixotic battle against George Bush will help win the war for the soul of the Republican Party...
...last word. And who could doubt that there is still much to revise in the story of the European conquest of North and South America that historians inherited? Its basic scheme was imperial: the epic advance of civilization against barbarism; the conquistador bringing the cross and the sword; the red man shrinking back before the cavalry and the railroad. Manifest Destiny. The notion that all historians propagated this triumphalist myth uncritically is quite false; you have only to read Parkman or Prescott to realize that. But after it left the histories and sank deep into popular culture, it became...