Word: idea
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Symposium by Muriel Spark. Ten guests assemble for a fashionable London dinner party, with no idea of just how murderously interesting the affair will turn out to be. The author here approaches the sinister elegance of her The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). She introduces fundamental issues -- salvation and sin, inspiration and insanity, free will and destiny -- through the medium of light but lethal comedy...
Apparently determined to put the idea to a test, a communist hard-liner named Sazhi Umalatova stepped to the podium almost as soon as the Congress of People's Deputies opened last week. Charging that Gorbachev had lost the "moral right to lead the country," she moved a vote of no confidence in him. It failed, 1,288 to 426, but the spectacle was deeply unsettling to Eduard Shevardnadze, who asked in his resignation speech, "Is this normal...
...electricity cause cancer? In a society that literally runs on electric power, the very idea seems preposterous. But for more than a decade, a growing band of scientists and journalists has pointed to studies that seem to link exposure to electromagnetic fields with increased risk of leukemia and other malignancies. The implications are unsettling, to say the least, since everyone comes into contact with such fields, which are generated by everything electrical, from power lines and antennas to personal computers and microwave ovens. Because evidence on the subject is inconclusive and often contradictory, it has been hard to decide whether...
...Electric blankets. They lie right on top of the body for hours at a time. It's a good idea to warm the bed and then unplug the blanket before going to sleep -- or better still, get a quilt instead...
...discourage Iraqi visitors, we got the idea of immobilizing the building's elevators. Imad agreed to knock out six of the seven lifts. He removed some parts, and the elevators stopped running. It was wonderful. Upstairs we took doorknobs off fire doors so looters couldn't move around so easily. We carried the knobs around in our pockets...