Word: fervor
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...invaluable source for everyone interested in this strange movement, historian Daniel J. Kevles notes, somewhat dryly, that "eugenicists identified human worth with the qualities they presumed themselves to possess--the sort that facilitated passage through schools, universities and professional training." Kevles' insight helps explain the almost messianic fervor that eugenicists on both sides of the Atlantic displayed during the early years of this century. These were people who felt themselves and the future of their children threatened. In Britain members of the upper middle class feared they would be swamped and taxed to extinction by the profligate overbreeding...
Much of this public fervor looks comically ill informed in hindsight. In the U.S. and Britain, fairs and exhibitions regularly featured exhibits illustrating Mendelian laws of inheritance, often in the form of black-and-white guinea pigs stuffed and mounted to demonstrate the heritability of fur color. Kevles quotes from a chart accompanying such a display: "Unfit human traits such as feeblemindedness, epilepsy, criminality, insanity, alcoholism, pauperism and many others run in families and are inherited in exactly the same way as color in guinea pigs...
Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 opened the evening with bright and pleasant fervor. According to the program notes, this particular concer-to--like a good deal of his other pieces--was composed for Schumann's wife Clara, who performed as the soloist during its premeire on Dec. 4, 1845. Upon hearing the concerto, one cannot help but dream about what a wonderful and passionate performance the premiere must have been. One can hear Schumann's adoration for Clara etched into every movent, from the sparkling and brilliant "Allegro affettuoso" to the slower, sweeter "Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso...
ISTANBUL: Italy's soccer champions may want to stay home Wednesday. They're scheduled to travel to Istanbul for a European Cup clash with their Turkish counterparts -- but in light of the anti-Italian fervor sweeping Turkey's streets, Rome has advised its citizens to stay away. As if Turkey's freeing of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan weren't enough to inflame Turkish anger, on Monday the Italian prime minister told Turkey to make peace with the Kurdish separatists and accused it of "systematic violations of human rights." That won't raise the prospects for soccer diplomacy...
...third and central work of Calasso's five-book project about mythical and intellectual beginnings. The first book in the series was the critically and popularly acclaimed The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which recounted with proper flair and fervor the entire chronology and theogeny of Greek and Roman mythology for over-stimulated postmodern audience. Next came The Ruin of Kasch, which told of how modern culture and ideas can spring from the complete decimation of a past culture. In Ka, Calasso tackles the myths of the Indian subcontinent and traces the theological origins of that culture from these stories...