Word: quirks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mann and Taylor discovered the existence of this quirk by spending a sum mer month questioning people waiting in lines at sporting events or movie hous es. With uncanny precision, the research ers found, the mood of the queuers changed at the mysterious but universally recognizable dividing point. Ahead of it, people estimated the length of the line and their chances of success quite accurately; often they would over estimate the number of people ahead of them as a pessimistic cushion against being disappointed. But just behind the point, people consistently underestimated the size of the crowd ahead of them...
James Farmer looks on black power as part of the "American experience," not as any extremist quirk. "The Irish went through the same thing. There would be signs, 'Men wanted, N.I.N.A.'--no Irish need apply. The Irish riots of the 1860s, especially one in New York, would make the riots of the last five years look like child's play." He describes how New York vigilantes organized the first American police force, how the police were to rough up Irishmen, and how the Irish struck back by joining the force. He laughs and pauses. "You know, they used to draw...
...Stassen, according to friends, is as implacable "as a medium tank." Ponderous and humorless, he travels the country by airliner and rented cars to confront an electorate that does not care. To him, running for President seems to be somewhere between a hobby and a quirk. "He has this blind spot," said a friend, "this assumption that he knows more than anybody...
...shaped breakfast roll with a shell so tough that it travels well in trouser pockets and can bear giant charges of Schmalz or butter and jam without buckling. Trouble is, the best Brötchen is freshly baked Brötchen, and that is denied West Germans through a quirk of law dating back to Hitler. To end night shifts for bakers, the Nazis in 1936 forbade any commercial baking from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.-and the law still stands in West Germany. So, until midmorning, everybody's Brötchen is delivered to the doorstep a full...
Witnessing this worldwide obduracy, writers as disparate as Naturalist Konrad Lorenz and Novelist Arthur Koestler have redefined Homo sapiens as Homo maniacus, arguing that man appears doomed by some inherent quirk to follow the dinosaur into oblivion. Among the apocalyptically minded, the only question is where Armageddon will begin. Harlem or the Hotel Majestic? The Sorbonne or the Sinai Peninsula...