Word: churlish
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...American soldier was an appropriate selection, yet there was no mention of the coalition soldiers from other nations whose lives have been sacrificed in Iraq. I do not want to sound churlish, but without the help of the forces from numerous other countries, the task of overthrowing Saddam Hussein would have been considerably tougher. Byron Nicholls Scunthorpe, England...
Triumphing over extreme hunger, cramped quarters and churlish Londoners who whacked golf balls at him and tried to cut his water supply, magician DAVID BLAINE finally emerged last week from the Plexiglas box in which he had dangled above the banks of the Thames River for 44 days. Blaine said he staged the public endurance test to display "the ultimate work of art ... human suffering." Upon exiting his box, the frail showman burst into tears. Blaine, who had lost nearly 60 lbs., was rushed to a hospital and given nutritional drinks before being allowed his first solid food, a handful...
...Malfoy is still a cardboard villain who talks as if he's twiddling his mustachio. Yes, the Sorting Hat sings another embarrassingly lame song (Rowling, who has learned so much from Tolkien, should have learned to stay away from poetry). But Rowling does so much right that it's churlish to dwell on her minor missteps. (O.K., one more: Dobby still talks like Jar Jar Binks.) She has shed the clumsy devices--the impostors and the secret identities--that marred the shape of some of the earlier books. Her prose, always a serviceable, unshowy instrument, is stronger and more confident...
...modesty when Watson explains how he and Crick, a dropout physicist, managed to beat the world-renowned chemist Linus Pauling to the double helix. Watson said that it was really a simple problem: ?If it were complicated, I wouldn?t have gotten it.? He refused to retract his somewhat churlish portrait of his rival, the British crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, in his gossipy book The Double Helix, saying that she blew her chances of cracking the puzzle by refusing to cooperate with her savvy King?s College co-worker Maurice Wilkins, who ultimately shared a Nobel with Watson and Crick...
...ideas about Islam have become axiomatic: that Americans need to know more about the religion and that "moderate" Muslims in the U.S. and other Western societies need to reclaim their faith from those who kill and maim in its name. With that background, it might seem churlish to cavil at a serious attempt to address both needs. But there is something about the PBS documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet (Dec. 18, 9 p.m. E.T.) that doesn't convince...