Yet it would appear that no financial meltdown, no matter how great, can shake academia's manic and irrational pursuit of a creature as imaginary as a unicorn: an even remotely qualified faculty made up of proportional numbers of blacks, Hispanics and women.
Waiting for the subway, one favorite story came to mind, Julio Cortazar's Axototl, the story of a man whose manic obsession and identification with a curious creature turned him into one.
Sophisticates and Wall Streets' quantitative wizards hate the notion, but the stock market is a psychological creature driven as much by a manic depressive pathology as it is by corporate earnings and economic indicators.
In "Opus Cactus," haunting music sets the mood for a menagerie of creatures sprung from Mr. Pendleton's manic imagination -- variations on lizards, scorpions, tumbleweeds and snakes -- that slink and slither across the stage.
Sophisticates and Wall Street's quantitative wizards hate the notion, but the stock market is a psychological creature driven as much by a manic-depressive pathology as it is by corporate earnings and economic indicators.
With boundless energy and manic obsession, he has made television his own subversive creature, pushing it beyond the banalities of network and cable into the realm of art and critique.
Platt's Steinbrenner was, of course, the manic seventies Steinbrenner — "I'm picturing really wide lapels, checkered jackets, and white shoes," Platt said — more a creature of his time than the aloof Boss of recent decades, with his trademark white turtleneck and blue blazer.
as being a manic-depressive, manic type.
Mr. Ross looks almost manic.
