Word: notion
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Easier but wrong. Because, as strange as the notion may seem to those who view opera as Dr. Johnson's "exotic and irrational entertainment," art matters. It matters in Czechoslovakia, where a playwright has become President; in East Germany, where a Leipzig conductor, Kurt Masur, was a spiritual leader of the peaceful revolution; in Lithuania, where a musicologist is seeking to lead his land out of the Soviet Union. And it matters in Paris, where the Socialist Mitterrand has undertaken a series of cultural public-works projects that have enhanced the quality of life in the world's most beautiful...
...firms control most stock trading, the theory went, and they would be able to prop up prices should any serious selling begin. On Black Monday in 1987, such intervention helped keep Tokyo's losses under 15%, in contrast to a 22.6% drop in the Dow, giving credence to the notion that Japan was a special, blessed case. In the final analysis, though, the Tokyo market appears as vulnerable as any other to the laws of supply and demand. "It was a classic bubble," says John Makin, director of fiscal policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington...
Violence in language has become almost as casual as the possession of handguns. The curious notion has taken hold that emphasis in communicating is impossible without the incessant use of four-letter words. Some screenwriters openly admit that they are careful not to turn in scripts that are devoid of foul language lest the classification office impose the curse of a G (general) rating. Motion-picture exhibitors have a strong preference for the R (restricted) rating, probably on the theory of forbidden fruit. Hence writers and producers have every incentive to employ tasteless language and gory scenes...
Everything I have learned about the educational process convinces me that the notion that children can outgrow casual attitudes toward brutality is wrong. Count on it: if you saturate young minds with materials showing that human beings are fit subjects for debasement or dismembering, the result will be desensitization to everything that should produce revulsion or resistance. The first aim of education is to develop respect for life, just as the highest expression of civilization is the supreme tenderness that people are strong enough to feel and manifest toward one another. If society is breaking down, as it too often...
Finally, our schools might encourage the notion that few things are more rewarding than genuine creativity, whether in the clothes we wear, the way we communicate, the nurturing of human relationships, or how we locate the best in ourselves and put it to work...