Word: quirks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...strange flashes of light in the darkened spacecraft, even though his eyes were closed. "I think I'm going out of my mind," Aldrin told Neil Armstrong. While Armstrong and other astronauts confirmed the mysterious flashes, NASA scientists were at first inclined to attribute them to an optical quirk. Now they have proposed a more plausible explanation: cosmic rays. Though only some of these high-speed particles-mostly protons-manage to break through the shield of the earth's magnetic field, they can easily penetrate the eyelids of a space traveler, pass through the eye fluid and strike...
Texas law sets a minimum jail term for robbery by assault, but no maximum. That legal quirk gave a Dallas jury last week an opportunity to indulge its draconian fantasies. The panel found Joseph Sills guilty of a $73.10 stickup. It was roughly his 20th conviction. Dallas has been roiled by repeated banditry, and the prosecutor touted the deterrent value of long prison terms. So the jury sentenced Sills to 1,000 years...
Burger believes that a quirk in the American character is at least partly responsible for deplorable prison conditions. In the long view of history, he notes, America became a superpower practically overnight, a fact that he feels has engraved a sense of intolerance toward failed people on the national soul. Said Burger: "Few things characterize our attitude toward prisoners and prisons more than indifference and impatience with the failure of the prisoner to return to society corrected and reasonably ready to earn an honest way in life." Burger looks to psychiatrists and psychologists to shoulder much of the burden...
...conservation agents dragged the cetaceans, of the species Pseudorca crassidens, the false killer whale, back into deep water. But the whales doggedly finned themselves onto the sand again, and 125 died. Scientists were at a loss to explain the mass death wish: perhaps a leader gone berserk, or a quirk of weather or topology that disoriented the whales' biological sonar systems. To those who see omens, it seemed that the whales were trying to tell us something. To those who have read the remarkable novel The Day of the Dolphin, the event had a haunting ring. In that book...
However. Yardling Dave Eliot defeat his varsity competition in the Carl Joyce 880-yard run, leading all the way with a time of 1.55.7. Sparked by the 49.8. leg of Time D'Acci, the freshman mile-relay team of Dave Anderson, John Quirk, Bob Clayton and D'Acci won easily...