Word: blot
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...Blot...
...York's Mount Sinai Hospital reports that people no longer respond to the well-known Rorschach inkblot test the way they once did. In the Rorschach, patients disclose their emotional conflicts by describing the people, animals and objects they visualize in abstract shapes. One of the ten standard blots has long been helpful in spotting sexual difficulties. In the 1950s, 51% of patients who were shown the blot said that it looked like a male figure. That response was considered normal. As for the 39% who thought the blot resembled a female, they were suspected of homosexual leanings...
Surprising Reversal. Today, on the other hand, only 16% of those tested think the blot looks like a male figure; the percentage who sees it as female has risen to 51%. To Psychologist Brown, who based his conclusions on a careful study of 1,400 patients, the surprising reversal accurately mirrors a culture in which men have become more feminine and women more masculine than they used...
...then, last year, I saw Paula Prentiss, the tough, erotic nurse in Catch-22, stretch out naked in the languorous sunshine, and, in the process, blot out all the images of the forties I had worked so hard to accrue. The same thing had happened the year before when Jane Fonda's Gloria ( They Shoot Horses, Don't They? ) had come to dominate my sense of the thirties, and two years before that when Faye Dunaway's Bonnie ( Bonnie and Clyde ) tried her hand at the same. Now I have no trouble with all the old movies I've seen...
Sensitive to Glare. With a million times the light-gathering power of the unaided eye, the giant telescopes are extremely sensitive to the slightest glare in the sky. Even the light from a city 50 miles away can blot out the dim specks produced on a photographic plate by a distant galaxy or quasar. Smog adds to the astronomer's headache; by scattering ground light in all directions, tiny smog particles can greatly increase the glare over an observatory. Not only the amount, but also the character of the light can affect a telescope's usefulness. Increasingly, mercury...