Word: thingness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what are the basic requirements? Who can join? You are given an application form to fill out, that's the first thing. You have to be male. The questions include "Do you believe in a supreme being?" It doesn't specify one particular religion, but because of the way the rituals have evolved, it's assumed a Mason is going to have a non-specific belief in a God or deity. It also asks if you've ever been convicted of a serious crime. That is a deal breaker. The main other thing is they want confirmation that...
Some of the more persistent rumors about Freemasons include the notion that they're successors to the medieval Knights of Templar, that they're trying to create a New World Order and that they use symbols to communicate ancient wisdom. What was the most surprising thing you found? That lodges are learning how to get by with fewer members and fewer resources. There was a certain cachet in ages past. But the overall membership has really been aging. There's a real attrition rate now. If it's going to survive at all, it has to turn that around...
...here's the thing. It's easy to run Brown down, because his writing isn't very deft. He introduces new characters with a kind of electric breathlessness that borders on the inadvertently hilarious ("Newly hired security guard Alfonso Nuñez carefully studied the male visitor now approaching his checkpoint ..."). And the unfortunate sentence "His massive sex organ bore the tattooed symbols of his destiny" should itself be forcibly tattooed on Brown's massive sex organ. Worse, Brown's scholarship reads like the work of a man who believes what he reads in Wikipedia. In particular, the book suffers...
...earlier this year. The site won a lot of awards from the media, which helped it gain the credibility it needed to get people to hand over their financial data. You don't get from zero dollars to $170 million in market value in three years without knowing a thing or two about money...
...Berlusconi can be measured as the sum of his appetites and ego. They are what have helped make him the most influential Italian of his generation. But his often uncontrollable desire to persuade and seduce - rather than the petty calculations of his foes - is the one thing that could bring everything crashing down around...