Word: benignity
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Some areas might actually profit from the shifts. The Northeast, for example, could get a more benign climate, not unlike Florida's. Canada's growing season might lengthen, and some deserts would begin to bloom. In addition, the extra CO2 might increase the rate of photosynthesis, encouraging more vigorous plant growth. The reports also pointed out that effects could be mitigated by tactics like switching to crops more suitable for the new conditions...
...language-the word cripple in this instance, which has the sound of a flat slap in the face. Yet a few days after Watt's remark, in a bizarre protest demonstration in his defense, a man on crutches supported the usage, citing other contexts where "cripple" is benign. True enough. Former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz forced himself out of the Ford Administration by telling a cruel and tasteless joke about "coloreds"; yet Dick Gregory could title his autobiography Nigger, and Flip Wilson won love and fortune by creating self-mocking black stereotypes. Context seems all, or much...
Your article on independent operating clinics [Sept. 5] reminded me of my home leave from Africa six years ago, when I consulted a physician about removing a benign but unsightly tumor from my arm. He said I would have to enter the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, have surgery Thursday afternoon (general anesthesia), and maybe I would go home Friday afternoon. I opted not to have the surgery. Back in Africa, I consulted a physician at a mission hospital, where I went in for surgery at 4 p.m. (local anesthesia), walked out at 5:30 p.m. and never had any problems...
...body releases natural opiates, called endorphins, which induce the trancelike state that runners in particular achieve after about 40 minutes of strenuous effort. Athletes sometimes become addicted to these opiates and push themselves to the point of injury to get their usual dosage. Generally, though, the effects are benign. William Glasser, a Brentwood, Calif. psychotherapist and author of Positive Addiction, offers the laid-back argument that running "becomes a way to access your own creativity...
Today, at 80, retired from writing fiction, Simenon lives in a Swiss retreat with one of his former household maids. Popular fancy has tended to see him as the model for the benign, pipe-smoking Maigret, but Bresler maintains that the only connection is wish fulfillment. Maigret, with his equanimity, his intuitive sympathy for others, his fidelity to one woman, is the man that Simenon never could be. Less plausibly, Bresler attributes Simenon's "stunted sexuality" to his rejection by, and rebellion against, the formidably dour widowed mother he left behind in Liège. (When Simenon...