Word: symptom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...This new infusion of fiction into the contemporary biography seems as much a symptom of readership as of much-pondered methodology. It may be ultimately impossible to recreate someone's life in words, and therefore perhaps one might as well add a bit of fiction to a biography. But a much more compelling reason for creativity in biography stems from the problem of entertaining the reader. If the reader wants to relive the life of John Glenn, why not let the reader relive an embellished life of Reagan, in a sense more complete and enticing than the real thing. Does...
...said his wife Omayma. "Now they have murdered him." Every one of el-Batouti's colleagues, friends and relatives depicts him as a loving family man, a believer but not a fanatic, respected and well off, content with his imminent retirement, a man who had never displayed the least symptom of psychiatric disorder. "He's a guy who wouldn't hurt a fly," says Los Angeles resident Helal el-Sherif, a friend of el-Batouti's, echoing other friends and family. "He certainly wouldn't take 216 passengers to their deaths." Over dinner at the Sherifs two nights before...
Afraid not. Bad breath isn't an illness; it's merely a symptom of something else. In some cases, the something else really is an illness--diabetes, for example, or some kidney disorder or an infection of the sinuses or bronchial tubes or gums. Infections can usually be cured, and if you're suffering from an incurable one or from another serious condition, bad breath is the least of your problems...
Granted these questions may possess no answers. My inability to resolve them may be a perennial symptom of youth or maybe even the human condition and no reflection on the merits of my education. However, my refined ability to argue a thesis in five to seven pages, double-spaced, does me no good at all in even attempting to broach them. If anything my swollen rational capacities make it more difficult for me to find anything to believe in, any source of beautiful illogical inspiration...
Maybe it was fallout from the gray matter that conceived E=mc2 or the fact that it was the week after a full moon, but something prompted an outburst of weirdness in response to the June 28 Science story on Einstein's brain. The first symptom was the declaration from Missouri's self-proclaimed "Prophet King" Kenna Farris: "I would allow science to study my brain, as Einstein's is being studied, but I am taking it with me after I rise from the dead." Next came word from a Michigan woman who claimed, "Like Einstein, I am an avatar...