Word: minor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rather than trying to rein in Stalin and his rampaging Red Army, Roosevelt and Churchill made what they considered minor concessions. They did not insist that Soviet military forces be withdrawn from Eastern Europe. Instead they settled for a vague commitment by the three powers to promote democratic governments and free elections in each of the liberated but Soviet- occupied nations...
...modern airliner, as all know, cleverly compresses the minor irritations of several days or weeks of travel into a few hours of astonishing misery. There is no need to speak of the automobile, superb for drive-in banking, exasperating for other uses. What else is there? Dog sledding, backpacking? Each has its merits. Hot-air ballooning? Lovely, but lacking direction. Are we forgetting something...
...alarms raised by consumer groups may prove to be a mixed blessing. Some experts complain that a generation that faces fewer real health threats than did their grandparents has become hypersensitive to relatively minor perils. Biochemist Bruce Ames of the University of California, Berkeley, points out that naturally occurring carcinogens in many foods -- cabbage, broccoli and oranges -- are much more potent than traces of man-made pesticides. "Most of us are more secure with respect to basic survival than we were a generation ago," says Ann Fisher, manager of the EPA's Risk Communication Program...
...that we are faulted for every time somebody comes to interview us," he complains. But that was not the only slip. Last June the newspaper teased readers with a story about a homosexual call-boy ring that allegedly involved "key officials of the Reagan and Bush Administrations." Only minor Administration officials were identified...
That does not mean that any of the remaining hard-line governments will necessarily be toppled anytime soon. Nor do they show signs of making more than minor changes in their orthodox programs. And there seems to be a flip side to Gorbachev's repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine: it also means that Moscow will not intervene to force reform. Intriguingly, though, some Soviet officials are debating whether it might be wiser to give a shove to the recalcitrant leadership in Czechoslovakia, where popular pressure for change seems ripest...