Word: taboo
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...tried to fight back is Antonio Bassolino, Governor of the Campania region. When he was mayor of Naples in the 1990s, Bassolino led a campaign cracking down on small-time contraband cigarette vendors. Recalling a similar outbreak of bloodshed over contraband traffic in 1997, he says, "We broke a taboo back then by insisting that the guy selling cigarettes on the street corner wasn't some poor soul, but a sentry for the Camorra." The current violence, he thinks, is a call to strengthen Italy's justice system. Drug dealers "should know they risk serving real time," he says...
...film. Teenagers seem to shy from such post-breakup swaps. Bearman, who heads the sociology department at Columbia University, suggests that dating the former boyfriend of your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend may involve a loss of status or cross a line of loyalty. "It's an incest taboo of sorts," suggests co-author James Moody, an Ohio State sociologist. The behavior is a big factor in creating the long chains that spread germs...
...various professions. It does not mean that it is the only factor. Still, if it is one factor, we cannot reflexively assume that different statistical representation of men and women in science and engineering is itself proof of discrimination. Incidentally, another sign that we are dealing with a taboo is that when it comes to this issue, ordinarily intelligent scientists suddenly lose their ability to think quantitatively and warp statistical hypotheses into crude dichotomies...
...truth cannot be offensive. Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is “offensive” even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry...
DIED. MAKGATHO MANDELA, 54, eldest son of former South African President Nelson Mandela; of AIDS-related complications; in Johannesburg. Mandela announced the cause of death at a news conference, saying AIDS, which kills 600 South Africans daily, requires public discussion--an African taboo, yet "the only way of making it appear to be a normal illness...