Word: peculiarities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...object turned out to be peculiar. It's half as massive as Jupiter, but orbiting closer to 51 Pegasi than Mercury is to the sun. That means its surface temperature is 1300ūC, hotter than a blast furnace. Still, it is a planet. "I was a little schizophrenic about it," says Marcy. "On the one hand, we had been scooped. But I also felt euphoric that humanity had entered a new era in which new worlds were going to be subject to exploration...
Christianity faces a peculiar problem in relation to the Incarnation. Was this event unique in the universe, as official doctrine insists, or did God take on alien flesh too? Is Christ the Saviour of humans alone, or of all intelligent beings in our galaxy and beyond...
...memorial to Adolph Saanwald imply an endorsement of Hitler. Even the slowest tourist has more sophistication than that, and to imply that future generations of Harvard students would be confused at the sight of such a memorial to the Confederate dead and think it Harvard's endorsement of the "peculiar institution," certainly doesn't credit the future with much intelligence. The fact that other institutions have managed to commemorate their dead on both sides of the Civil War has not served to confuse their students or alumni as to where the institution stood in the conflict...
There are two good ways to become famous in America. One is to possess rare genius or, at the very least, an appreciable talent. The usual suspects come to mind: Hemingway, Gershwin, Hopper. Another is to appeal to a particular cultural neurosis, a peculiar demographic phenomenon. It was the latter which brought the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe more fame than he ever could have imagined and, in the eyes of many, more fame than he ever deserved...
Forget about social history. Though any post-Marxist pedant can wring out the usual insights about patriarchy and property in 17th century Dutch bourgeois life, none of them touch on the peculiar magic of Vermeer's images. Like Piero della Francesca, Vermeer was a highly inexpressive artist. He didn't even paint a self-portrait, as far as anyone knows. You come out of the exhibit knowing almost as little about Vermeer the man as when you went in. Biography, faint: Lived in Delft, a backwater. Son of a silkworker. A Papist in a Calvinist town. Quite successful nonetheless. Married...