Word: concoction
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Psychologists concoct some absurd situations to plumb the depths of chimp insight. For instance, one experiment has the apes observe two handlers deliver cups of juice. One accidentally spills juice on the floor; the other overturns the cup deliberately. When asked to choose a handler to deliver their next cup of juice, chimps prefer the clumsy person, suggesting that they are aware they are better off with a klutz than with a helper with evil intent. Again, in analogous experiments capuchin monkeys appear to be less shrewd. The animals will, pitiably, continue to put their trust in a human helper...
...most anti-Clinton lobbying groups are lying low (for now), the proposed bite on business meals is sparking a four-star effort by the restaurant association, which boasts a $21 million budget and one of the largest industry PACs in the nation. It will be a difficult souffle to concoct, since it's hard to find politicians willing to stand tall for $50 lunches. But a week before Clinton even announced his plans, the group persuaded Congresswoman Barbara Vucanovich of Nevada, where expense accounts run wild, to sponsor a bill that would re-establish 100% deductibility. Hours before the President...
There is nothing more heartbreaking than to see good Shaw done badly. It is not difficult to concoct frothy entertainment from, say, Pygmalion or Misalliance, but Heartbreak House can so easily fall apart in the hands of a less than ideal production--as it does in this American Repertory Theatre rendition...
...David Letterman nightmare and a mental rather than a physical farce. She simply moves into the house, inventing a secret marriage to Davis complete with details so preposterous that everyone, including his parents (Julie Harris and Donald Moffat), believes her. The assumption is that no one could possibly concoct a tale as wild as the one she tells...
...charges of defrauding the city. Brown says he paid the mayor $5,000 in kickbacks for city architectural work, a charge Arrington denies. While the mayor contended that his records will exonerate him, he also claimed that turning the documents over to the prosecutors may allow them to concoct a case against him. So why did he go to jail at all? "He wants to see if he can defuse the ((case)) by wrapping himself in the mantle of the civil rights movement," speculates political scientist Steven Daniels of the University of Alabama at Birmingham...