Word: rigor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stick to the ground, a distance of about three feet. Evidently we were not meant to see this part of the performance, or it would all have been done in the open. The performer ... is under a trance or stupor, and becomes stiff as if in a state of rigor mortis. When Subbayah was back on the ground his assistants carried him over to us and asked if we would try to bend his limbs. Even with the assistance of three coolies we were unable to do so. After Subbayah had been massaged for five minutes and had cold water...
...caught in suspicious circumstances and hard put to it to talk himself out") on trial for defrauding the Government, his grandfather's house in a country town. On his way to Russia he found that London now looked "much like Chicago." (And on his way back, through France: "Rigor mortis has set in in Paris.") Prepared to be sympathetic with Russia, he discovered many a Soviet custom that turned his U. S. stomach. In Moscow, he says, it is true that people always look over their shoulders before hazarding a political remark; he got the habit himself. The suppression...
...systems of determining grades. But this variety, far from being the spice of life, is rather the fly in the undergraduate's ointment. Some courses have schemes which insure justice and impartiality. Others, however, make of each section man an arbitrary despot. The natural variation in the rigor of these lieutenants is translated into a vast difference among the standards obtaining within a single course. Distinctions among students of the same merit necessarily follow...
...Centro in California's Imperial Valley the temperature last week rose to 122° F. Stepping out of doors was like walking into a blast furnace's draft. Snakes and lizards, whose muscles stiffen with rigor caloris at 104°, died. But insects, which can function at 147°, and animals, with a system of maintaining body temperatures at normal regardless of climate, pursued their ordinary activities, as did the men, women and children of El Centro. Women dressed in organdie; men went without coats. Everyone wore hats to prevent sunstroke. But of heat stroke there was no fear...
According to records, this is Mr. Cooper's first attempt at biography. And if this necessitates any mitigation of rigor, let it be said that in a superficial way the picture of Vienna in 1815 is accurate and at times interesting, and that during the last fifty pages, when Talleyrand and Mr. Cooper are relieved of the political onus, the pictures and phrasing acquire a new freshness. But to all save the most causal reader, this latest plunge into the mystery of Talleyrand is worthless; considered as an historical document, it offers practically nothing save a superficial rehash of secondary...