Word: mistakenness
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...dense jungle that surrounds the 800-acre Arraijan Tank Farm. For two hours, the Marines fired small arms and mortars. Miraculously, no one was hurt; the previous night, a smaller firefight had resulted in the accidental fatal shooting of a Marine. Could the U.S. troops have once again mistaken their fellow countrymen for hostile Panamanians? "Unauthorized personnel," insisted the U.S. Southern Command. "Shadows," countered the Panama Defense Forces...
...mammography is not infallible. There is a 1% chance of a false-positive result -- a mistaken diagnosis of a tumor -- and the anxiety, expense and pain associated with a biopsy. A graver problem is the risk of a false negative: about 20% of the time the X rays fail to detect cancers, which may be picked up by physical exam. "Is mammography worth it?" asks Eddy. Some women, he notes, upon hearing that ten years of screening will save 22 lives "will say, '22 out of 10,000, well, that'll be me.' Others will say, 'Take half...
...passersby, "Hey, nice underwear." Haaah! I kill me! All in all, I am the busiest long-shnozzed, four-toothed, 3-ft. 2-in. creature with burnt-siena fur anywhere on earth. Of course, there aren't many talking life forms here that look like me. I am continually being mistaken for an anteater, a dwarf orangutan or an aardvark, which on Melmac we encountered only in crossword puzzles...
Part of the reason for this mistaken identity is that my very existence has to remain a secret to keep the government scientists off my case. I have managed it through a brilliant scam: practically everyone thinks I'm a puppet! Sustaining this conspiracy takes a few collaborators. My main partner is a onetime comic magician named Paul Fusco. He actually claims to have invented me. Sure, he talks like me, laughs like me, jokes like me, even sort of looks like me. But I'm 230 years old and he's 35, barely old enough to have...
...reclaim his proboscis, the play treats the audience to delightfully unpredictable morsels of absurdism, such as the scene where the hapless Kovolyov encounters his nose, dressed in the uniform of a state councilor, praying at St. Isaac's Cathedral. "Excuse me, sir," says the nose, "but you are mistaken, for I am my own person...