Word: invention
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Zealots are loathe to admit that they would support Israel even if it weren't a democracy, so they invent excuses when Israel strays from the liberal democratic path. Sometimes they deny, sometimes they rationalize, and sometimes they impute the motives of Israel's critics...
...thinking person's UFO, an improbability that nevertheless resonates with mysterious and sometimes marvelous possibilities. But it has become a rather tired topic. It is almost as hard nowadays to create fictional vehicles capable of reawakening childhood reveries about zapping through the years as it is to invent a scientific instrument actually able to journey up and down the old continuum...
Durang pokes fun at the hectic pace of American life by having Dr. Framingham insist, "Our society is fastpaced, so I have fast ejaculations," and he demonstrates the falseness of modern relationships by having Bruce and his analyst invent a personal ad "guaranteed" to attract women...
...cathartic about earthquakes. For some time mankind has been in the business of manufacturing its own disasters -- wars, acid rain and other pollutions, drugs, a globe aswarm with refugees. Perhaps it is a relief for a moment to be face to face with a disaster that man did not invent, a cataclysm that has at least a sort of innocence of origin in larger powers...
McKibben says that he believes that it is possible to find a solution to the global warming problem. People who "figured out how you could build an airplane that can fly eight times the speed of sound" can invent a way to survive without damaging the planet, he says...