Word: benign
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...word. The (humorless) physiologist describes laughter as spasmodic, rhythmic, vocalized, expiratory and, when due to tickling, involuntary: Those studying the neural pathways of what is called "the tickle-laughter reflex arc" postulate that tickling results from the simultaneous sensation of both touch and pain - a kind of benign assault, wherein Normality of touch (N) and a prospective Violence of pain (V) suddenly occupy the same space. N + V = H (hilarity...
...those students concerned with the continued vitality of Harvard theater should be wary of the seemingly benign camraderie that makes the theater community so unique. For along with a sense of community comes a sense of social norms. And such norms can, over time, begin to prevade everything from ideas about casting to styles of acting to a director's choice of plays and even to decisions about which plays to attend, leaving those who want to try something different in virtual obscurity...
There are many benign dictators who could make America an abstractly "happier" place--and do so on a time scale our legislature couldn't begin to imagine. One cannot look around the world and guess which countries are "free" simply from their recent policy choices...
...Ritual participation of the people in government is the single distinguishing factor of democracy. The social, fiscal and environmental policies of the U.S. could be radically improved on a standard scale by benign dictatorship; if we continue to tolerate the system as is, it must be out of faith in process as much as in achievement...
...down its ratings - tape delays, too many up-close-and- personals, results being reported by an increasingly fast media (online and off) - will still be there (in the case of online media, tenfold) when NBC returns to Athens in 2004. The halcyon days when results were padlocked by a benign media dictatorship are over, thankfully. NBC's real problem is believing that its ratings have nothing to do with the quality of its broadcasts. If it wants to relight its ratings torch in 2004, here are a few suggestions...