Word: habit
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...baggage, the curse of the reptilian brain. John Keegan is agnostic in the nature-nurture argument. "All we need to accept," he writes in A History of Warfare (Knopf; 432 pages; $27.50), "is that, over the course of 4,000 years of experiment and repetition, warmaking has become a habit." Whether it is a filthy habit or, as sometimes happens, a dirty necessity, war obviously has transcendent excitements, temptations and mysteries. And it is the oldest drama: the epic of the limbic system...
...largest gold mines in the country are owned by non-U.S. firms, most of them Canadian). Only one Western job in 1,000 is directly tied to metal mining. But mining interests have not lost the knack of command, nor have most Rocky Mountain legislators lost the habit of subservience. Attempts in Congress to reform the key U.S. law, passed in 1872 and not substantially revised for hard-rock mining since then, have failed so far in the Senate. A pallid bill introduced by Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho is industry-approved and reforms nothing...
Unfortunately, Yeltsin seems to have trouble with the concept of moderation; he has a disturbing habit of taking quick unilateral decisions without consultation. This is a useful trait at times, but thoroughly dangerous as a general modus operandi...
American public opinion has of late turned firmly against U.S. involvement in foreign countries. The recent trend toward isolationism stems from what Americans perceive to be the Clinton Administration's habit of waffling and its mishandling of the apparently intractable situations in Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti. We shouldn't be sending our boys in harm's way unless our interests are at stake, the majority of the public screams in poll after poll...
...roommates soon grew tired of hearing me whine. As I became infamous for introducing Seattle into every conversation, my friend Nirit developed a parody of this habit, which became a popular request at gatherings of my friends. Nirit was also the one who began referring to it as "the S-word." As in, "Lori, you are not allowed to use the S-word for at least the next twenty minutes...