Word: crestfallen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sounds dry and disheartening, it is. Dawkins himself laments that people who read his work sometimes walk away feeling crestfallen and "depressed." And so, Dawkins' latest book, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, resonates on a slightly more optimistic note. Although it is not an apologia for Dawkins' other books, it is a manual on how to read them. Dawkins contends that people habitually misconstrue science as deconstructive and demystifying. The average person, whose science background might not extend beyond a high school lab, has been programmed to set up a dichotomy of two domains...
...Some of eBay's competitors have escrow-type accounts and customized delivery services. Auction Universe has just begun offering an optional "Bid$afe" policy with money-back guarantees and insurance coverage of as much as $3,000. Of course, every auction involves risk of some sort. Just ask the crestfallen bidders who lost out on that Ulysses S. Grant pillowcase. Or the collector still looking for a matching kidney...
...signed by George Soros, for whom he oversees $22 billion. Uh, make that a little less. Last week Druckenmiller watched helplessly as the Russian debt market vaporized into fiscal neutrinos, taking the last of $2 billion of Soros' Russia-invested money into hyperspace. Fessing up on CNBC, the crestfallen trader blinked at the camera and softly explained that the Moscow meltdown had turned "a very good year into a mediocre...
...Jesus' burial cloth, its keepers elected to allow one more test. They distributed small samples to three laboratories for radiocarbon dating. Several months later, the labs revealed their verdict: the linen of the cloth dated no earlier than the late Middle Ages. Skeptics rejoiced; romantics were subdued. One crestfallen enthusiast later wrote, "It seemed that anyone who had previously upheld any serious case for the shroud's credibility...had been dealt a fatal stab to the heart...
...That lesson certainly held this week, as millions of crestfallen (and titillated) Americans turned toward Washington and cried "How could you do it? How could you get caught?" The government of the most powerful nation on Earth has been brought to a screeching halt -- by Paula Jones' lawyers. On Tuesday, America will tune in for the State of the Union Address, and probably snicker through the whole thing. ("He said 'private sector...