Word: facto
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European bankers predict that the pound will float down to somewhere between $2.40 and $2.50, after which the British government will make official that de facto devaluation. Whether that will stabilize the world financial system a while longer remains to be seen. The most discouraging thing about the panic last week was that safety devices built up in the past six months collapsed promptly when put to the test...
This sort of attention, it may be argued, is perfectly healthy. Suicide, after all, used to be punished by driving a stake through the heart of the victim (ex post facto). It is still to some extent a shame-shrouded topic. And if the 20th century has taken anything on faith it is the belief that talking about how sick you are is a step toward recovery...
...hawked in the very street where he was taking his punishment. A similar entrepreneurial taint clouds Alvarez's effort. He makes a fine brisk guide to changing historic attitudes toward suicide: Roman Stoics practiced it gladly; romantic poets preached it madly; the early Christians pursued de facto suicide by avidly seeking martyrdom, until in A.D. 412 Saint Augustine declared the act a mortal sin. Alvarez also offers a fascinating chronicle of literary figures who espoused, contemplated or tried suicide-Montaigne, John Donne, Cowper, Thomas Chatterton, Dostoevsky, and so on up to Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway. It is only...
...proposals. The Case-Church Bill unamended, provided for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. military assistance to Indochina, contingent only upon an agreement with the North Vietnamese for the release of prisoners. Byrd's amendment added a ceasefire agreement to the conditions for American withdrawal. It therefore expressed de facto approval for withdrawal conditions set by President Nixon two weeks ago. Some of the Harvard lobbyists would have preferred to support an alternative to the President's policies which included provision for serious negotiations and a coalition government in Saigon. Given the alternatives under Senate consideration when the lobby arrived...
...might also have mentioned her energy, ambition, courage, cunning, charm, wit and wardrobe. It took all those things, and plenty of gall besides, to turn Eliza Gilbert into Lola Montez, famous dancer, mistress of Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas père, intimate of kings and prime ministers, de facto ruler of Bavaria during Ludwig I's declining years, and belle of the California gold rush...