Word: peculiarities
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...being done. One senior vice president gave underlings envelopes containing play money equal to how much extra profit he thought they could be bringing in. But in attempting to trace the blame for the check-kiting scheme as high as possible on the corporate ladder, Bell discovered a "peculiar management structure" at Hutton with fuzzy personal responsibilities. No one, for example, was willing to admit being the immediate boss of Morley, the cash manager. Wrote Bell: "Morley is now an orphan, seemingly lost or at least in limbo along with his corporate function." Even so, the investigator found fault with...
Some also claim that the cicada's peculiar, burning, raspy song, produced by a pair of ribbed membranes at the sides of the male's abdomen, is irritating to predators. That seems fanciful, but perhaps it is true because people are uncommonly cross about cicadas and complain that their song is nerve-racking. In Missouri, these days, it is constant and pervasive. The cicadas have three things to say. One is a steady, insistent, buzzy trill: zs-zs-zs-zs-zs. It is a background to a more varied kee-o-keeeee-o-kee-o that punctuates the steady drone...
...little peculiar, the border guards thought, but why not go along with somebody who wants to help out the law? Then the crew boss went to his workers, explained the deal and said everyone would make more money if work did not have to be interrupted by raids. So the workers drew lots once a week to pick the five who would have to be shipped back to the Mexican border. Before the five victims left, though, the hat was passed for funds to help the unlucky five sneak back north across the border, a trip that usually started...
...decade is half over, but already one begins to feel the peculiar sensation of looking back on the art of the '80s. How, in America, have its frequent miseries balanced out against its episodic splendors? The end of a century -- and even more, the end of a millennium -- brings anxiety with it: the unavoidable doubts and mannerisms of the fin de siecle, when every kind of stylistic bubble rises to the cultural surface, swells and bursts with a soft plop and a whiff, while marsh lights flicker and the cultural promoters croak their Aristophanic chorus. The SoHo Tar Pits: heaven...
From this point on, Vizinczey's entertaining display of granted wishes takes a peculiar turn. He writes: "Perhaps nothing about Mark Niven's life is of such general significance as the way he lost his fortune." The ominous shadow of a moral descends over the proceedings. Mark must contend with a confiscatory Bahamian government, which demands half of his take before he even recovers it. Then other sharks start circling: an unscrupulous Manhattan art dealer named John Vallantine, who decides to relieve Mark of his remaining $150 million, and corrupt lawyers in the U.S. who gather to pick...