Word: rough
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...along the gently curving road, cruising at 25 m.p.h. through rural Michigan's autumnal landscape of gold-and-orange-dappled trees. I'm reclining in the rear of the car with Jeff Zyburt, a Chrysler project manager. As we chat, the Jeep changes lanes from smooth asphalt to rough cobblestone, which sets us passengers bouncing around in the back seat...
...between vehicles traveling 35 m.p.h. to 6 ft. while retaining a 3-ft. margin of safety. But margins of safety are in the eye of the beholder, as Chrysler's Zyburt and I discover about halfway around one of the track's cobblestone lanes. "This is where it gets rough on our test drivers," he warns me, just as, on cue, the Jeep slams to a halt, throwing us painfully against our seat belts. "Oops," Zyburt says sheepishly. He has accidentally bumped into the system-override "kill'' button set in the back seat. If this had been a real smartway...
...best-seller lists, someone else is, and he's not exactly a moral paragon. In the current best seller Absolute Power, the Leader of the Free World, the heir of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, almost kills a paramour during rough sex and then aids in the cover-up. In the summer's hot title Exclusive, the President of the United States murders the baby his girlfriend refused to abort. In the film Escape from L.A., the Chief Executive orders the assassination of his own daughter, while in the movie version of Primary Colors, John Travolta is slated to play...
Enter on big, rough wheels the state of California, which helped pioneer the tricky practice of democracy through referendum. This year's most controversial example is Proposition 215. It would permit patients with cancer, aids, glaucoma, arthritis and other serious illnesses to grow, possess and use marijuana. It would also allow doctors to "prescribe" pot without fear of prosecution--or merely to recommend it, without committing themselves to a note pad. Though the change would not overrule federal or state laws that criminalize the recreational use of marijuana, Prop 215 would provide voter-approved legal backing for patients or doctors...
...pangs of concern about the plight of slaves, even though there were none in England to reciprocate his empathy. And consider the flush of compassion we feel upon witnessing, via TV, famine that is a hemisphere away. When moved by such images to donate money or canned goods--the rough opposite of greed and gluttony--we are in some Darwinian sense "misusing" our equipment of reciprocal altruism; the equipment is being "fooled" by electronic technology into (unconsciously) thinking that the victims of famine are right next door and might someday reciprocate. But that doesn't diminish the act. Our capacity...