Word: peculiar
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...swampy, semitropical wilderness in southern Florida called the Everglades lies in a peculiar bowl-shaped depression that was bound to arouse the curiosity of geologists. They concluded years ago that the distinctive cavity was probably formed over many aeons as ground water slowly dissolved a surface layer of limestone. Now Geologist Edward J. Petuch, 36, of Florida International University in Miami, has another idea. In a report to the Geological Society of America's national convention in Orlando, he suggested that the Everglades are the mud-filled remains of an impact crater left by an asteroid that struck the earth...
...embarrassment, of course, in quoting his quattrocento idols: that was the natural use of a heritage. He took from Pisanello, Laurana, Cellini and Desiderio da Settignano; the pose of Farragut is Donatello's St. George without a shield. Still, any academic hack can redo a prototype; Saint-Gaudens' peculiar gift was to shadow these massive and well-known shapes with the tiny subliminal events of a dreaming hand. In 1880 he could give Dr. Henry Shiff's bronze beard a labile, gratuitous beauty of texture akin to Monet; while, seen close up, the stubbled, worn face of Sherman...
...other characteristic of youth is an absence: the absence of the memory and experience of age. "New generation" politicians, unlike a Reagan or a Mondale, have no memory of the great transforming events of this century such as the Depression, World War II or postwar reconstruction. Only the peculiar arrogance of youth can make a virtue of that vice. That vice, of course, is no fault of the young, but it is hardly a great qualification for the challenges of the presidency...
...competition. The game of nuclear one-upmanship is the outward manifestation of their essentially political conflict. Instead of using nuclear weapons to fight, the two sides have learned to use them to maneuver for political advantage and, at the same time, to diminish the danger of catastrophic conflict. That peculiar exercise in sublimation is what arms control is all about...
...said what he meant and meant what he said," proclaims Richard Girnt Butler, 66, of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Butler sounds like just another Fundamentalist country preacher--until he reveals his peculiar interpretation of God's word. He is one of the leaders of the increasingly troublesome Christian Identity movement, which preaches the most corrosive theology in America, blending hatred of blacks and Jews with visions of an imminent apocalypse and advocating--and sometimes practicing--armed violence to achieve its goals...