Word: notion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1990
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sincerity and the classic notion of dulces et utiles (to instruct while delighting) were evident in unlikely places. For five nights, Americans were riveted to a spare, elegiac documentary about the Civil War. Its popularity denoted a certain retrospective spirit. Rap hip-hopped from violent rhetoric ) into its own didactic mode, rhythmically urging kids to study, pray and love themselves...
Truth often begins as a form of blasphemy: the revelation of deception is a kind of honesty. The year witnessed a variety of examples of candor and a sense of coming to terms with reality. The wishful notion that we were embarking on a kinder, gentler year went out the window with the invasion of Kuwait. Facing facts was evident in everything from the distribution of condoms in public schools to the release of Nelson Mandela, to the movement for congressional-term limits, to William Bennett saying he wanted to leave politics to make money, to Marla Maples (allegedly) saying...
Most people know only one thing about Kuwait: that George Bush has pledged to free it. Nevertheless, a pernicious notion has taken hold. Kuwait, it is alleged, was an arrogant, undemocratic handkerchief of a country no one would care about were it not for the oil beneath its sands. Is that view accurate? And if so, could the nation change after its liberation? Kuwaitis themselves have a vested interest in the answers to those questions -- but so does the rest of the world, and particularly the half-million allied troops massed for war in the gulf. For now that Saddam...
Principal Peters chafes at the notion of the integrated classroom as the sole avenue to sound education. "Forget the idea that black children can't learn unless they're sitting next to a white child," she argues. "Some values are universal, like self-love, respect, integrity and perseverance." She incorporates seven such principles into a candle-lighting ceremony at the beginning of each school year for the new eighth-graders. "We tell them, 'This is your beginning of becoming young black adults. There is nothing wrong with...
...Still, the Iraqi leader has ignored international opinion before. During the Iran-Iraq conflict, he employed poison gas against Iranian infantry and his own Kurdish population. The main impact of germ warfare on American soldiers may be psychological. Says Robert Weinberg, a germ-warfare expert at M.I.T.: "The very notion of biological agents strikes fear into their hearts...