Word: customs
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...paper. Take away meaning and a word is only noise. Changing chairman to chairperson is mock doctrine and flaccid democracy, altering neither the audience nor, in fact, the office holder. Despite its suffix, chairman is no more sexist than the French designation of "boat" as masculine, or the English custom of referring to a ship with feminine pronouns. Chairman is a role, not a pejorative. Congressman is an office, not a chauvinist plot. Mankind is a term for all humanity, not some 49% of it. The feminist attack on social crimes may be as legitimate as it was inevitable...
Under this concept, a battle of the superpowers would be something that everyone would look forward to. Instead of waging large-scale war every 20 or so years, as is now the custom, we might, by popular demand, reduce the cycle to four or even two years. War could be held each time in some carefully selected remote area of sufficient size to give it the proper scope and background. This way, war production would never slacken, thereby creating jobs and stimulating economic growth...
...Vance Packard speaks of negative "nomadic values" and then reports "one longtime resident" who still calls on new neighbors only when she is sure they are not at home. It is clear that empty custom is more important to that woman than meeting new people and extending genuine greetings to her neighbors...
...than last year. But since many crops were in oversupply last year, prices were down. This year, by contrast, the market belongs to the farmer. Tobacco auctioneers in North Carolina, where the crop was kept short by the weather, are being forced to ration tobacco at premium prices among customers; in effect the auctions, though performed for custom's sake, are a sham. In California an early frost scared buyers of grapes into believing that the crop might be sparse. Actually, the cold weather did only spotty damage, but in some cases prices were bid up by more than...
...tumultuous traditional session of plate smashing on the dance floor of the Neraida nightclub. "I lost count of the plates," said a witness, "but it must have been an Olympic record." Theoretically, the shattered plates could get Onassis six months in jail: the Greek government outlawed the custom in 1969, and Attorney Nikolaos Galeadis promptly filed a complaint against Onassis. "The law is the law and is the same for everyone," snapped Galeadis...