Word: discern
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...attempt to discern just such unexpected reversals, some prophets have searched the past for clues to the future. There are, after all, lessons in history, aren't there? Not always. Looking back to the English Civil War of the 17th century and the Restoration of Charles II, French royalists, for example, expected an early return of the Bourbons after their own revolution. They got Napoleon instead. Some social prophets today have suggested that the sexual permissiveness of the 1960s will be followed by a puritanical reaction during the '70s. That, after all, is what happened in England after...
TIME'S discussion of the new romanticism is only one of a number of stories in this week's issue that discern a fascinating development, pose a surprising question or in some other way depart from the expected norm. Among them...
...novel described Lolita as a "mixture of tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity." And, as Humbert said, "you have to be an artist and a madman with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in order to discern by certain ineffable signs the little deadly demon among the wholesome children...
...commission was circumspect in assigning blame to high places. But it did point out that Congress has the responsibility for funding the EEOC adequately. Commission studies did not discern "any substantial period in the past when enforcement was at a uniformly high level of effectiveness." The Nixon Administration, despite promises to make existing laws work rather than seek new civil rights statutes, has not improved upon the record...
...unusually strong language that, by causing a world glut of dollars, the huge U.S. deficits "form the monetary breeding ground for a continuing international inflationary process." If worldwide inflation continues too long, he said, worldwide recession is "inescapable." The B.I.S. annual report added that it is "hard to discern how the U.S. authorities expect, by their own actions, to correct the balance of payments...