Word: paradoxical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...this land of paradox, Indian civil airline pilots fly more than 25 million domestic miles a year and jet fighters are being built in Indian factories by Indian workmen. Yet not long ago, when a plane landed for the first time in a district of northern India, peasants tried to feed it hay. The old ways die hard: recently a Westernized and highly educated dean of an Indian law school kept postponing his flight to the U.S. until an auspicious date was selected for him by his astrologer...
...Amherst men listed drawbacks aplenty, notably dullard school boards, low pay and low prestige. They emphasized a paradox created by crowded schools: U.S. teachers now look forward to school jobs that "will get them out of the classroom." Especially affected is the really good teacher-"a master, an expert, a torero"-who gets all the tough classes with no extra pay. Eventually, he grabs an administrative job to survive. "The whole question of improving U.S. education," said one teacher, "is tied up with this dichotomy...
Saints issue from the hand of God, but they are canonized on earth. In what seems a paradox to most non-Catholics, the Roman Catholic Church brings the full light of reason to play on a complex mystery of faith: whether a man or woman has displayed Christlike sanctity, including the performance of miracles. To this question, the church brings the meticulous accounting of a bank examiner, the ferreting instincts of a good detective, and the judicial lore of centuries of precedents. In practice, these are embodied in an initial diocesan investigation of claims to sainthood, followed by a formal...
Shotover's son-in-law Hector is another of Shaw's Chinese-puzzle characters, whose identity opens up like a box to reveal a new one underneath, leaving him a paradox that is never resolved. One of his personae is that of the romantic hero, with a moustache "like a bronze candlestick" and a general air of being a cross between the Prisoner of Zenda and Henry V. Hector is also a boaster and a liar and his wife's lapdog, but he is so totally footling and gormless in Dennis Price's portrayal that his cries of agony...
...paradox of belief in God at the University deepens when one examines the self-declared unbeliever. The most disturbing thing to be said about the Harvard atheist or agnostic is that he does not seem disturbed. He has rejected any positive belief in some of the cardinal propositions that have sustained and nourished his civilization for thousands of years, but on any issue, moral or political, other than the theistic one, he appears indistinguishable from his believing classmates...