Word: astonishment
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There is an unpredictable, impish streak in the Russian character often expressed in the desire to confound expectations and astonish with feats of prowess. The Russians have always longed to drive their national troika at breakneck speed, forcing other nations, in Gogol's words, to "look askance, as they step aside to give her the right of way." Now history has accorded them a unique chance...
There are still many games to go in this match. Maybe Fischer will astonish us again. Maybe he will shake off the years and, magically, become great again, young again. But if he continues on this trajectory of mediocrity, he will have addressed a warning to all the gods living and dead: Never come back...
Religion concentrator Rachel L. Burger '92, like many students in the field, has a dual concentration--in her case, religion and women's studies, a combination that would probably astonish Harvard's Puritan founders...
...baseball will come to Oakland again this October. The fans -- a little jaded but forever immature -- will cheer their favorites with Bay Area gentility, punctuated by the occasional "Rip it, dude!" Triumph will satisfy but not surprise them; only failure will astonish. The A's know this. As they enter the play-offs, they know their true opponents are not the Blue Jays or the Red Sox, the Pirates or the Reds, but the great ghost of baseball history: the '27 Yankees, the Philadelphia A's of '29-'31, the Yanks of '49-'53, the Oakland...
There is indeed. It is a system that punishes eroticism with an X rating, yet rewards violence -- from rape to dismemberment -- with an R. Each new violent movie, like this summer's Total Recall, wants to astonish jaded audiences with its special-effects audacity. But adult sexuality, even when investigated as discreetly as it is in Henry & June, is deemed objectionable. "You can cut off a breast," says Kaufman, "but you can't caress it. The violent majority is dictating to a tender minority...