Word: mentality
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...seized the Grand Marnier bottle, smashed it against the wall, and then used the jagged remnant to tear out Louise Pickering's throat? The police had charged Charles Day Terry, 17, who worked as a dishwasher at Pickering's restaurant and who had twice been confined to mental institutions. Terry claimed an unusual alibi: he had been buying marijuana in Annapolis on the night of the murder. He said he had been mugged in the process, and that was why there was blood on his shirt...
...brain to the head. Not that the brain actually leaves the head during the summer months; rather, something happens to it, or on it, like a moon caught in an eccentric orbit between the sun and, say, East Hampton or Bodega Bay. Astronomers know this event either as the "mental equinox" or "cranial eclipse." It is not serious, causes no permanent damage; the apparatus is simply altered while the body is on vacation. After Labor Day, when the body stands vertical again, the brain pops back into shape like an inflated cauliflower, proving its recovery by formulating the first white...
...twelve years as Libya's master, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has earned a special place on the world stage: that of the quintessential troublemaker. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has described him as "a mental case" and "a lunatic." African neighbors fear his expansionist ambitions. The U.S. considers him an international outlaw and has accused him of meddling in no fewer than 45 nations. When Authors Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre were looking for a villain to cast as the mastermind of a plot to hold New York City up for nuclear blackmail in their novel The Fifth Horseman, they naturally...
...rite in observance of the covenant between God and Abraham. For many Jews today, circumcision of an infant boy is a joyous family celebration. In the U.S. the operation found favor in the late 1800s as a deterrent to masturbation, then popularly considered the source of much physical and mental illness. During World War II, military surgeons concluded that circumcision was necessary for hygiene, particularly in the tropics, and snipped the foreskins of uncircumcised soldiers and sailors. After the war, circumcising infant boys became routine, and not only for hygienic reasons. Circumcised males were said to be less susceptible...
...scores for ethnic groups, he says, change over time. They reflect family background and cultural assimilation. As proof he cites a group of Jews tested during World War I. Many of them were first-generation immigrants from Russia and Poland, and they had "some of the lowest scores on mental tests of any of the numerous ethnic groups tested." Now their descendants rank among the highest...