Word: frisson
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...according to the antimissileers. Flying lasers are the dream of Star Wars boosters, theoretically combining the speed of light with multiple shots from a single platform. Such lasers play into America's can-do hubris, compounded by the frisson of excitement generated by theoretical invulnerability they provide. "The airborne laser is initially proven and should continue to be developed, tested and even deployed if necessary," Riki Ellison, a former NFL linebacker who now heads the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said shortly after the shootdown. "The ability of our military to use the airborne laser ... to engage and destroy multiple Iranian...
...months. But his alleged dalliances with prostitutes and underage girls is getting some competition from another scandal unfolding in Rome. This one involves a TV-host-turned-governor who was forced to admit to a long history of frequenting transsexual prostitutes. This week, that scandal received the tangential frisson of murder...
...carefully hidden brushstrokes give the Bellini its placidly silken, liquid surface, and even its painted and columned frame recalls the Italian High Renaissance; but the rougher surface of the canvas seems to free Titian to make visible his brushwork and lend his gilt-framed work a subdued and textured frisson. Titian dominates this first room of the exhibition, and his remarkable portrait of Pope Paul III introduces the psychological depths that set off these Venetians from their southern predecessors. The pope sits in a sea of faded velvet—his mantle and his chair—a fading...
...apologizing to the country. The reality is a tad more ambiguous. Frost is magnificent when, having pressed Nixon to say he made more than mistakes, Nixon asks him what word he would suggest. He tosses his clipboard aside and presents a three-count indictment - still a thrilling TV frisson. Nixon does say he let the country down, but couches his confession is so many subordinate clauses that he could leave the ring believing Frost's knockout was only technical. If the exchange lacks the score-settling flourish of Morgan's version, it leaves us with our abiding take on Nixon...
From Lassie and Trigger to Gentle Ben and Babe The Talking Pig, the true-life stories of cinema's animal stars are seldom told. Fewer still get to tell the tale themselves. So a frisson of disappointment ran through London's literary circles last week when it was revealed that Me Cheeta,, the just-published memoirs of the chimpanzee who starred in 11 Tarzan movies from 1934 to 1948, is actually the work of a ghostwriter, James Lever. Even before the "autobiography" appeared to a string of rave reviews, expectations for Me Cheeta, had been primed when it was longlisted...