Word: line
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...people stand in line when their chances of getting to see a hit movie or play are obviously hopeless...
Leon Mann, a social psychologist at Harvard, and K. F. Taylor of the University of Melbourne, report in the Jour nal of Personality and Social Psychology that people in lines are possessed of a curious sixth sense that subconsciously spots the "critical point" when the sup ply of tickets will give out. Yet instead of giving up and going home, late comers succumb to an ersatz optimism and delude themselves into thinking that the line is shorter than it really...
Mann and Taylor discovered the existence of this quirk by spending a sum mer month questioning people waiting in lines at sporting events or movie hous es. With uncanny precision, the research ers found, the mood of the queuers changed at the mysterious but universally recognizable dividing point. Ahead of it, people estimated the length of the line and their chances of success quite accurately; often they would over estimate the number of people ahead of them as a pessimistic cushion against being disappointed. But just behind the point, people consistently underestimated the size of the crowd ahead of them...
Spivey's Corner (pop. 100), North Carolina, had its big day in history last week. It was there that once and for all they drew the line between hollering and hollerin', in the goldarnedest contest that the village had seen since Dewey Jackson won half a ton of fertilizer for hog calling...
Serene Moonlight. In painting as in manners, Tanner was a conservative. Nonetheless, he enjoyed a remarkable popular success. Soon after he arrived in Paris, he began to paint Biblical subjects in Oriental settings. Executed with sinuous vigor of line and a dramatic use of chiaroscuro, these pictures had much in common stylistically with Edouard Vuillard and Art Nouveau. When Daniel in the Lion's Den was shown in the Paris Salon in 1896, the famous French history painter Jean-Leon Gerome insisted that it be given a place of honor. When the Raising of Lazarus was shown...