Word: yin
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...befits the onset of the century's finale, a mixture of earnestness and irony -- a kind of American yin and yang -- characterized the year. The Northwest hamlet of Twin Peaks became the moody, ironic capital of the American landscape. Madonna, the queen of camp, literally and cheekily wrapped herself in the Stars and Stripes in a larky get-out-the-vote video. Even George Bush got into the irony act when he told America that since he is President, he no longer has to eat his broccoli...
...least one monster -- the state's capacity for terrible violence against its citizens. The Chinese and, until last week, the Rumanians were not so lucky. The Chinese students carried portraits of the Soviet leader, and they were shouting, "In Russia they have Gorbachev; in China we have whom?" The yin and yang of 1989: tanks vs. glasnost, the dead hand of the past vs. Gorbachev's vigorous, risky plunge into the future. Gorbachev is a hero for what he would not do -- in fact, could not do, without tearing out the moral wiring of his ambitions for the future...
...proceed to the right thing? Last week's signals from Budget Director-designate Richard Darman were intriguing. At the outset, Darman seemed willing to raise new revenues if euphemisms like "definitional changes" and "user fees" could be substituted for the word tax. Then, in a yin-yang reminiscent of the early 1980s, when he helped craft Reagan's acceptance of revenue enhancements, Darman backed off, invoking the "duck test." No matter what a revenue raiser is called, he told Congress, if it looks like a tax and sounds like a tax, and people perceive...
Humanity's current predatory relationship with nature reflects a man- centered world view that has evolved over the ages. Almost every society has had its myths about the earth and its origins. The ancient Chinese depicted Chaos as an enormous egg whose parts separated into earth and sky, yin and yang. The Greeks believed Gaia, the earth, was created immediately after Chaos and gave birth to the gods. In many pagan societies, the earth was seen as a mother, a fertile giver of life. Nature -- the soil, forest, sea -- was endowed with divinity, and mortals were subordinate...
...glory, especially the danger to peace, was already a backdrop of the Games and a theme of the entertainment. Alternately across the infield, children spun pinwheels or broke boards with their feet. Devil masks were brandished in a pantomime of chaos. Like East and West, or North and South, yin slammed yang in a breathtaking display of ropework and philosophy. But the exquisite counterpoint to all the violent charades was the sight of a boy nearly seven, born in Seoul on the day the Games were awarded, rolling a hoop across the suddenly empty lawn...