Word: western
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Take a recent resolution adduced by actress Bridget Fonda. Two simple words: "Floss regularly." Shorn of pretense and ringing with truth. Undaunted by the mundane at this august moment in the history of Western civilization is cnn legal analyst Greta Van Susteren. On the eve of the new millennium, she vows "to learn to comb my hair before my show rather than after." Medical and personal-grooming resolutions happen to be among my favorites. Here are two that I may or may not use this year, so feel free to borrow them if you'd like: "To actually mail...
...richest empires are Ming dynasty China and the realm of the Ottomans, which blocks western Europe's old land routes to the east. Portugal and Spain seek oceanic alternatives; Lisbon rounds the Cape of Good Hope to reach India; Madrid crosses the Atlantic in hopes of landing in Marco Polo's Cathay but finds the Americas instead. Two continents are suddenly open to conquest...
Britannia rules an empire on which the sun never sets. And Western powers rule almost every other part of the world. Japan emulates Europe and the U.S. and joins Britain, Russia, France and Germany in contemplating the dismemberment of the decrepit Chinese Empire. Nationalism sows the seeds of two world wars...
...strange amalgam of beliefs formed the complicated core of Gandhism. History will merely smile at his railing against Western ways, industrialism and material pleasures. He never stopped calling for a nation that would turn its back on technology to prosper through village self-sufficiency, but not even the Mahatma could hold back progress. Yet many today share his uneasiness with the way mechanization and materialism sicken the human spirit...
That's why so much Roman culture survived the disintegration of the Western Empire. The most prolific memes had long since spread to Byzantium if not beyond, and would keep replicating themselves even as Western Europe struggled to regroup. Thus the astrolabe would eventually be reintroduced to the area via Islamic culture, which thrived during the early Middle Ages. Meanwhile, in Asia, key memes would arise--the spinning wheel, even printing--and some would migrate all the way to Europe...