Word: downrightness
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...this sounds too good to be true now, it seemed downright ludicrous in 1991, when flamboyant media entrepreneur Chris Whittle announced his grand plan to build, by 1996, a nationwide chain of 200 private schools to revitalize American public education--for $2.5 billion. Because Whittle's communications company all but imploded in 1994, the Edison Project was radically scaled back, leaving education experts skeptical, lenders leery--and Larry Vaughn in a precarious position...
...where Colapinto's performance leaves the realm of the comprehensible and becomes downright baffling is the second mode in which his Macbeth operates: the petulant. In delivering his lines, Colapinto seems to shift abruptly from shouts of anguish to the persona of a cynical, self-centered adolescent. Speaking in a tone of mingled peevishness and self-pity, he proceeds to recite Macbeth's lines as though he's whining at Fate for giving him such a hard time...
Sweeping pronouncements like that will strike many scientists who study the brain as puzzling, if not downright ludicrous. Neurobiologists, in particular, will find much to quibble with in How the Mind Works--which is not surprising, since Pinker comes at the subject from an entirely different perspective. The son of a traveling salesman, Pinker grew up in Montreal and attended McGill University, where he became fascinated with the psychology of perception and cognition. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard, then moved a few blocks down Massachusetts Avenue to M.I.T., linguist Chomsky's home base. Chomsky's seminal theory--that humans...
Overall, Sommers has led the Expository Writing program into a newly-energized era, where the leadership can look beyond the narrow definition of the first-year class and into a downright global attitude...
Massachusetts is heading into its peak foliage season, a phenomenon that attracts tourists from all over the world. While Harvard Square may not exactly be a prime leaf peeping location, you only have to venture a little ways out into the suburbs to be completely blown away by a downright breathtaking array of colors that cannot be matched anywhere else in the country...