Word: tragic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what can you expect from the culture that brought us Hercules? In the myth Hercules was a tragic figure: born with the strength to strangle serpents in his cradle, but with far less than the normal quotient of self-control, he kills his wife Megara and their three children in an inexplicable fit of rage and is condemned to perform his superhuman feats as a way of atonement. There's a lesson here, maybe, about the disproportion between human ability--mental or muscular--and our capacity for moral reflection. But in the movie the tormented demigod becomes "Herc," an ultra...
...goes well, our grandchildren will encounter the floodplains of Mars in a third-grade geography lesson, and maybe even find them a little dull. But cuteness short-circuits the whole process of learning and discovery. When we turn the Martian terrain into a comic strip, when we reduce a tragic hero to an action figure, we are making things seem tame and familiar before we even know what they are. We are insisting, in our pathetic provincialism, that there is nothing out there--either in the mythic past or the distant reaches of space--that can't be labeled, depicted...
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: "I am horrified at this devastating bomb attack, and deeply regret the loss of life," etc., etc. "This tragic incident reinforces the urgency of a return to dialogue and negotiation...
...early incident was certainly tragic, but everyone's trying to work despite these awful circumstances," Dimond said...
...Jackson, 22, the woman who is charged with trying to extort $40 million from Cosby in exchange for not publicizing a story that could brand Cosby Deadbeat Daddy Dearest. The tug of sympathies is palpable. Does one side with Cosby, a man who has achieved heroic stature since the tragic shooting of his only son last January? Or does one go with the destitute young woman who claims that all she ever wanted was "one hug and one kiss" from Cosby, the man who she insists is her father...