Word: vastnesses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...into that capsule and undergo the immense risks that lie between the earth and the moon and the earth again. Yet, to thoughtful skeptics, the superorganized voyage of Apollo 11 suggests that lone, individual courage belongs to the past. The astronauts often seem to be interchangeable parts of a vast mechanism. They are buffered by a thousand protective devices, encased in layers of metal and wires and transistors, their very heartbeats monitored for deviation. Most of their decisions are made by computers. Hundreds of ships, planes, doctors and technicians stand by to rescue them from error. All this is strikingly...
Despite the moon shot's vast supportive forces, the astronauts themselves are essentially loners. Before they take off, they have no guarantees of success, let alone survival. Airborne, they can be aided only so far. After that, like the very earliest adventurers, they are on their own. Out in space, the future confronts the past. If they are stranded, no Navy will light their way home, no friendly tribes will take them...
...Justice Salmon P. Chase. The Treasury is stopping production of $500 (McKinley), $1,000 (Cleveland), $5,000 (Madison) and $10,000 (Chase) bills; demand for the big notes, first authorized primarily for dealings between banks in 1918, has dropped to a trickle because of checks and computers. For the vast majority who have never folded Justice Chase's (1808-73) piercing stare into their billfolds, little matter. But well-heeled collectors will note that there are only 383 of the $10,000 bills still in circulation...
...doors to paint, and the Barbizon school followed. Jean-Francois Millet captured the inherent dignity of peasant farmers, Daumier the poetry of the Parisian poor. But the overall point that the Minneapolis show makes is that 19th century French painting has too long been viewed as a vast academic conspiracy against the innovators who are now enshrined as the founders of modern art. It makes for a story of martyrs and villains. But, as usual in history, the victors were not all that virtuous and the vanquished not all that guilty. The Impressionists and their heirs have become an academy...
...argument: misuse of a gun is usually a public act; eavesdropping, on the other hand, tends to be a highly secret tactic. By disavowing court supervision of the practice, particularly in cases of eavesdropping on domestic political groups, the Justice Department has created a dangerous precedent. There is a vast difference between legally approved snooping on a Mafia overlord and unauthorized surveillance of a political maverick whose views do not happen to please an administration in power...