Word: pseudo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Then there's the other angle: the funny lady who actually does ask him to sleuth down her cat. The woman, Margo Sperling, is played by Lily Tomlin. Her character comes straight out of a stock bit she does on television specials and in night-clubs: the astrology nut, pseudo-psychoanalyst and perpetual high-on-lifer all rolled into one. When Welles flashes a rod for the first time in her presence, she cheerfully informs him that "my shrink says that people who play with guns are usually impotent...
...Harvard. Some say Fell's theories about Old World civilizations influencing American Indian cultures are nothing more than new variations of the discredited claims made by 19th century speculators; others point to racist implications in Fell's theories; and others say Fell's work is a classic example of pseudo-science. These serious criticisms are worth examining in some detail...
...Fell is respresentative of a particular tradition of writers who make wild claims about American Indians, he is also part of an even larger tradition of purveyors of pseudo-science. In his book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Martin Gardner, a columnist for Scientific American, describes the conditions in which theories such as Fell's tend to develop...
...book, Gardner notes that pseudo-scientific theories are sometimes the work of brilliant men who can construct quite intricate puzzles for others to undo. Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution makes the same point about Fell's work: "Fell spends years putting together his information...He's constructed an elaborate puzzle for us to solve...Recently I spent a couple of hours with a reporter and we looked up several of these words [from Fell's lists comparing ancient European languages and modern Indian tongues]...they can all be refuted, but in the end it's a waste of effort...
...difficulty in Barry's early narrative is his feeble pseudo-Freudian attempt to explain Aurore Dupin's later adoption of a "male" personality--George Sand. Shortly before her father's death, she was dressed in a military uniform like her father's. "Not yet four, not yet George Sand, she had found her costume, that of a male," Barry writes. He describes several other childhood incidents: the secret games she played with her imaginary personal god (her first fictional creation), a male who was dressed as a female for special rites; her mourning grandmother calling...