Word: swiftness
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...absurdists have heeded the admonition of their existential idol Kierkegaard, who wrote: "The comic spirit is not wild or vehement, its laughter is not shrill." Black humor has a long tradition that reached its apex in Jonathan Swift. But the humorists who dwell on death and disaster today lean too often toward the narcissistic, reflecting images of themselves as helpless heroes in a world they can neither take nor leave. Their less lugubrious colleagues, on the other hand, have been all too willing to cede the comic to the journalists and to allow the commercial to override the classic...
Mock Invasion. Its death was swift and violent. In a single night, a conspiracy led by five young Sandhurst-trained officers killed or neutralized their superiors and grabbed control of big units of the army. Then, in simultaneous strikes throughout the nation, they killed or kidnaped Nigeria's most powerful feudal lord, the Sardauna of Sokoto; its two most corrupt politicians, Finance Minister Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh and Western Region Premier Chief Samuel Akintola; and its most prestigious international figure, Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa...
...nuclear deterrent. Its buried COC is designed to survive any sneak attack; its trained staff will be able to make almost instantaneous assessment of continent-wide damage while alerting U.S. and Canadian missiles and bombers. The name of the game is defense. But the payoff for the aggressor is swift and terrible retaliation...
...called Group of Ten to hasten their efforts toward an agreement on a new international currency to supplement dollars, pounds and gold in world trade, as the U.S. has been urging. The problem, of course, is old, and even in the relatively uncomplicated days of 1720, English Satirist Jonathan Swift recognized it in a memorable quatrain...
...Swift's insight still applies-246 years later-as few statesmen understand bet ter than the Group of Ten, a blue-ribbon panel of finance ministers and central-bank governors from Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Sweden and the U.S. The group will shortly meet again in Paris, with its sights set on reaching a compromise agreement by March...