Word: mandarin
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...Post-Copernican Summit. In recognition of diminished superpower influence, foreign policy mandarin Madeleine Albright invoked the astronomer who noted that the earth was not the center of the universe...
...seminal study of refrigerator pricing, invents IRAT and becomes exceedingly rich. He thus affronts the self-satisfied Cambridge community, where "no one has ever been known to repeat what he or she has heard at a party, only what he or she has said." This is the mandarin author's slyest satire...
...allowed the newly homeless, or those too frightened to stay in their insecure buildings, to camp out in their lobbies. At the darkened Stanford Court, complimentary caviar and smoked salmon were served by candlelight. The motive was not mere generosity: the comestibles would have spoiled without refrigeration. At the Mandarin Oriental, a manager explained, "We're doing our best to give our guests first-class comfort, even while bedding them down in the lobby." The expense-account Seven Hills of San Francisco Restaurant served a free sidewalk lunch to anyone who passed by. ) Bankers in three-piece suits munched chicken...
...Boston, Historian Hugh Thomas (Lord Thomas of Swynnerton) said the world now is a "tessellated pavement without cement." He was quoting something Edmund Burke said about Charles Townshend, a brilliant but erratic 18th century British statesman. Not bad, but somewhat mandarin. The audience had to remember, or look up, tessellation, which is a mosaic of small pieces of marble, glass or tile. This age, thinks Lord Thomas, is a mosaic of fragments, with nothing to hold them together. Is it an age of brilliant incoherence? Yes. It is also an age of incoherent stupidity...
Even Jagger, when pressed, can come out with an observation, characteristically jaded and spoken like rock's foremost mandarin. "There's not a lot in rock that is new," he says. "It's the same kind of chord sequences and the same kind of rhythm references and the same recycling of subject matter. But I don't think it's a problem. I mean, traditional musical forms like folk music in three chords or blues are endearing to Americans. They find some comfort in them...