Word: could
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...century before the more famous code of Hammurabi, left no doubt what would happen if you punched a man in the face: a fine of 10 shekels of silver (a bargain compared with the levy for biting off his nose, which would cost 60). As long as people could go about their business without fear of getting their noses bitten off, the social brain could productively throb...
...distant cities became linked through commerce (much of it orchestrated by written contract), culture acquired a kind of disaster insurance. Any valuable meme--the concept of the chariot or of coins--would spread so fast from city to city that it could survive any catastrophes that afflicted its birthplace. The world's data-processing system was getting better at making backup copies...
...technology in history. Eventually, it would convey detailed news of inventions, allowing people in distant lands who would never meet to collaborate, in effect, on new technologies. "James Watt's steam engine" was actually lots of people's steam engine, including the Frenchman who had first shown that steam could move a piston...
...ateliers, for example. But--saints be praised!--New York's police commissioner had closed Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession after one performance because it was "revolting, indecent and nauseating when it was not boring." As late as 1912, a magazine editor (quoted in Ann Douglas' Terrible Honesty) could write that "no-one paints life as it is--thank Heaven--for we could not bear it," and receive few arguments from his readers. It was an era in which the word irony described a passing attitude, not a cultural imperative, and celebrity was something pleasant that happened to deserving strivers...
...embrace modernism's most basic hallmark--self- and cultural awareness--and know exactly what traditions they are undermining. The difference between them may be largely a matter of fastidiousness. Ulysses is finally an affirmation: "I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes." Eliot's nervous collage can only evoke the low vitality of his cityscape; he cannot embrace it. There are too many "young men carbuncular" within its limits, deceiving themselves...