Word: ghoulish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NEXT hour and a half, 'night, Mother reproduces Marsha Norman's minutely choreographed jockeying between mother and daughter, the former trying to persuade the latter to abandon her ghoulish intention and the latter holding fast to her position...
...collaborator, Police Historian T.A. Critchley, found that few researchers had scrutinized contemporary accounts and public records. Their own examination unearthed appalling evidence of police ineptitude: "As the story developed it became clear that the system of 1811 had done no more than pronounce a confident, convenient and ghoulish judgment . . . while leaving the core of the Ratcliffe Highway murders wrapped in continuing mystery." The murders are commonly attributed to John Williams, a seaman who died by hanging while in police custody. James and Critchley make a compelling case for his innocence, finger a probable alternative villain and suggest that Williams' death...
...camp, Mengele was there to greet the new arrivals. With a nonchalant flick of his hand, he consigned some to labor duty, some to the gas chambers. Those who survived often ended up as human guinea pigs in the doctor's special lab, where he performed a variety of ghoulish experiments in genetics...
...Helpis adorned with, among other bizarre items, a quote from Sex Lives of Animals Without Backbones which provides a metaphor for relationships that's as apt (and unromantic) as they come. The excerpted passage notes that certain invertebrates "lose an arm while mating," and is immediately followed by a ghoulish bit of advice from The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette: "If you start to shake hands with someone who has lost an arm, shake his other hand...
Others were concerned less with the integrity of the donor than with the dignity of the recipient. At first, before Baby Fae's televised smile had beguiled skeptics, the word ghoulish was heard: some sacred barrier between species had been broken, some principle of separateness between man and animal violated. Indeed, it is a blow to man's idea of himself to think that a piece of plastic or animal tissue may occupy the seat of the emotions and perform perfectly well (albeit as a pump). It is biological Galileism, and just as humbling. Nevertheless it is fact...