Word: touche
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among the Monumbos of German New Guinea anyone who has slain a foe in war becomes thereby "unclean "... [He] must remain a long time in the men's clubhouse . .. He may touch nobody, not even his own wife and children; if he were to touch them it is believed that they would be covered with sores. He becomes clean again by washing and using other modes of purification...
...moral emptiness in the eddies of Viet Nam recalls the funk and disillusion that followed World War I. Someone has suggested that the U.S. after Saigon fell was something like Germany after 1918. The analogy, farfetched and literally false, contains a touch of truth. World War I was hard to beat as an example of dunderheaded, pointless slaughter. The men who fought it hated it just as much?and even in the same vocabularies?as the men who fought in Viet Nam. They went into it with the same illusions: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, Horace told...
Despite their shortcomings, the Saudi officials at SAMA are no soft touch. Says Michael Callen, who is managing director of the Saudi American Bank, a Riyadh-based affiliate of New York's Citibank: "A lot of borrowers think they've got a bank here run by people who ride camels. But the Saudis are tough and sophisticated. The foreign advisers may do the studies, but the Saudis make the decisions." One sign of tight Saudi control at SAMA: no telex can be wired from headquarters without a Saudi signature...
...world's work is done by people who do not feel very well." In the U.S. particularly, says Psychiatrist Mitchell Rosenthal, "people believe that you don't have to feel uncomfortable if you have the right doctor, the right drug connection, the right pusher. We have lost touch with the fundamental notion that people can operate not always feeling terribly well. Taking cocaine is not the answer. In the end it leaves you psychologically bankrupt...
...devotee, bending before the marble as if he loved it. 'It is truly flesh!' he said, and beaming, he added: 'You would think it moulded by kisses and caresses!' Then, suddenly, laying his hands upon the statue: 'You almost expect, when you touch this body, to find it warm...