Word: certain
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Plus--need it be said?--the human sexual impulse, like that of the bonobo, is not as tightly coupled to reproduction as certain pro-family moralists like to think. Even in so-called primitive hunter-gatherer societies, such as that of the Australian Aborigines, women have always managed to invent forms of contraception--herbal drinks, pessaries to block the cervix, oils to bog down the sperm. Then there is homosexuality, a reproductively senseless but nevertheless deeply compelling sexual strategy for millions of both sexes. Not to mention masturbation, celebrated by rapper Foxy Brown's chart-topping song...
...penalty. At times I have defended it, at times argued against it. I am thus only half civilized--and to make things worse, am not even sure on which side civilization lies. If I were a state's Governor, I would have to choose one or the other on certain midnights of the year when executioners awaited my go-ahead. As it is, I have the luxury to persist in ambivalence, going case by case, preserving the option of the noose...
REITs are investment companies that finance, own or operate commercial properties, including offices, malls, apartments and hotels. By law, they must pay out 95% of their rental and other income as dividends in exchange for certain tax advantages. REITs have flourished in the '90s as developers have sold shares into the bull market to raise capital instead of using banks and pension funds. Investors viewed these publicly traded stocks as a quick way in and out of the real estate game...
...look at great portraits today without a certain nostalgia. The painted portrait is a form that, like blank-verse drama in the theater or the caryatid in architecture, would seem to be on its last legs. Indeed, with few exceptions, it has no legs and seems unlikely to grow new ones. Photography took them away. But older portraits have hardly lost their magic and their grip on the imagination. This is why "Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch," which is on view (through April 25) at the National Gallery in London, and will be seen later this year...
...allow officers to take cars from repeat drunk drivers. There is ample precedent for such seizures, but usually they involve habitual offenders or hardened criminals. Federal and state laws have long permitted authorities to seize and auction homes, cars and just about anything else that can be tied to certain drug, bootlegging, prostitution and other crimes. Just days after Giuliani's expansion of the idea, neighboring Nassau County implemented a similar law and crowed that five cars had been seized the first morning...