Word: muttered
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...Vineyard and Nantucket, scientists are planning to release large numbers of a tiny wasp called Hunterellus hookeri. Success is uncertain. The wasps do kill some tick nymphs, but may in fact need a large and healthy tick population to maintain their own numbers. Other drastic preventives that householders mutter about while untaping their trousers -- region-wide burning of fields, pesticide spraying or slaughter of deer -- are just not politically or environmentally feasible...
...unlike Teutonic Knights or samurai, mutter their critics, are these modern specimens of great powers. When the call to battle Saddam Hussein bugled forth, Germany and Japan begged off as conscientious objectors. Though they have flourished and grown rich behind U.S. defense cordons, both countries quailed at the call to arms. War with Iraq? The wolf that ate Kuwait was not at their door. Deterring aggression? Bonn's attitude amounted to "Let George do it." Standing fast by a security partner? Washington found it apt that Tokyo is ringing in the Year of the Sheep...
...midst of this rule-bound spartanism, every visiting foreigner is taken to see the showcases of "social construction": the Tower of the Juche (self-reliance) Idea, embellished with carvings of the kimilsungia flower; a 70-ft. bronze statue of the Great Leader, before which women mutter prayers; an Arch of Triumph larger than Paris' Arc de Triomphe. Subway stations are opulent, with fireworks-shaped chandeliers, granite pillars, 250-ft. mosaics, and marble passageways and platforms. Yet many of the imperial structures have a slightly wistful, wasteful air: the enormous 150,000-seat May First Stadium, built in the stillborn hope...
...chubby girl with the baby face so impressed the late maestro Herbert von Karajan that he described her talent as a "miracle." Thirteen years after her concert debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, wunderkind ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER is still wunderbar. At 27 she has matured into one of the world's finest violinists. On a demanding schedule, she has already played her way around the globe this year, traveling with her two prized Stradivarius violins, her bow and her signature strapless designer dresses...
...dark side is that slapdash recusal can degenerate into a form of internal book burning, a crank's bonfire. The hyperactive recuser lives next door to the know-nothings and crackpots. He is liable to mutter to himself in public. Intelligent recusal must be elegantly done. There are rules. No ethnic slurs. Avoid recusing yourself on entire countries, such as Canada. Do not go scything down whole fields of knowledge. (On the other hand, I long ago recused myself on the subject of economics, about which I am a moron, and have not suffered a day's unhappiness because...