Word: rubicons
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...membership card from the 10th grade. Josh follows suit, emptying his wallet on the unsuspecting bouncer. The line begins to back up. People start shouting. The bouncer panics. He shoves all of our IDs back at us and slaps on entry-bands. We're in. We've crossed the Rubicon...
...Andrew Whiten, the striking difference between monkeys and chimps supports the notion that within primates there is a "mental Rubicon -- not the familiar one with humans on one side and everyone else on the other, but with man and at least the apes on the same side...
Even if some other creatures have crossed this mental Rubicon, human analytical abilities remain vastly superior to anything demonstrated elsewhere in the animal kingdom. In virtually all studies of animal intelligence and language skills, performance plummets as more elements are added to a task and as an animal has to remember these elements for long periods. By contrast, humans can call on vast working memory...
Finally, suppose there's no touching, no tableau, no quid pro quo -- just a crude exploratory gambit along the lines of "Hiya, babe, you wanna . . . ?" Here too some moral Rubicon has been crossed. Intimacy in a public setting is not just "inappropriate," in the prissy, yuppie sense. It can be deeply insulting, which is why a misapplied tu in French or du in German can be a fighting word. When we leave our homes to go to work, we assume an impersonal role like "teacher," "secretary" or "judge." We may even don a special costume (black robes, skirted suit...
...Last week, instead of subtly pointing at its wallet, the White House made clear that it was ready to pull it away. What had been an admonition came close to sounding like coercion, at least for some Israelis. Said Yossi Olmert, the Israeli government spokesman: "Bush has crossed that Rubicon...