Word: distractibility
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...that Tshombe is a tool of the Belgian government, which, in some measure, he is also. What they do not acknowledge is the fact that the former's leadership is of a very dubious brand indeed, and that the latter will not let anyone, including, if need be, Belgium, distract him from his ambitions of independence...
Laughing Matter. Cousteau allowed World War II to distract him only briefly and at intervals from his search. He served as gunnery officer on the cruiser Dupleix. After France's surrender he stayed in the navy in Occupied France, but worked for the underground; once, posing as an Italian officer, he led a party into the Italian headquarters at Sete and spent four taut hours photographing a code book and top-secret papers. Cousteau will say little about his experiences: "I have always hated espionage and secret-service work, and I still do. I think it is unfair...
...There is no use to spend money unless it is for the best"), Milstein is not sure even now that he would repeat his career in music if he had it to do all over again. "In Russia," he explains ironically, "life is so dreary there is nothing to distract. But here my daughter has television, she has skiing-why music...
Mankind's Epitaph. From then on, the opera details the moral and physical collapse of Aniara's 8,000 travelers. The passengers seek to distract themselves, turning first to jitterbugging (led by a party girl named Daisi Doody), later to an atavistic sex cult called "Yurg," involving lascivious dances in a hall of mirrors. The chief engineer dies, and during a gaudy celebration is fired in a coffin to become a sun satellite. After 24 years of space travel, the remaining passengers die, aware too late that in the destruction of his home planet man had lost...
...history. One of them involved a French instructor who used to teach in the University Hall basement classroom in the 1858-9 term. He had a touchy habit of listing his agenda for the day on the blackboard and hiding it with a curtain so as not to distract his young men in class. Then he would whip the curtain back dramatically and pompously at the right time in the recitation period...