Word: seemly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Soviet Union has its client dictators too. Rather than just tolerating leftist tyrannies, the Kremlin justifies them with dogma and defends them with tanks. Those that call themselves socialist and persecute in the name of the proletariat often seem more enduring than ideologically reactionary, avowedly anti-Communist dictatorships. Most of their staying power is due to the Soviet tanks, ready to roll over incipient democratization as they did in Prague in 1968. Political geography also helps leftist totalitarianism. It has been most durable in Eastern Europe, wedged snugly within the postwar Soviet sphere of influence, though even in that bloc...
...race and sex of the examiners who conduct tests seem to have little or no bearing on the lower scores of blacks, and Jensen insists that his analysis shows no sign that the tests are missing anything important. The graph curve that shows the number of blacks who have achieved each score in the IQ range is the same shape as the curve showing white achievement-except that it is displaced lower on the scale. And the ranking of test items in order of difficulty for blacks, he says, is exactly the same as the ranking for whites. "This means...
Jensen says he might be willing to oppose IQ testing in elementary schools, because such tests seem pointless, except to scan for the occasional bright underachiever who needs special help. Later on, he says, testing is essential to assure fairness in competition for college and good jobs. "It's better to rely on a test than on the whims of an interviewer or employer. The tests are color blind, and that should be reassuring...
Some moments in art history used to seem beyond resuscitation. Seventeenth century Venetian painting was one of them. Nobody bothered about it. It was an orphan, huddled between the father figures of the Venetian cinquecento-Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto-and the effervescent grandeur of the Tiepolos in the 18th century. Even today, when scholarship and the art market have opened every mass grave in search of something to write about and sell, the names of painters like Damiano Mazza or Alessandro Turchi do not make the pulse race...
...trying to ward off their demons with all the vanities for which they are so notorious?the fads, phobias, neuroses, magic charms and eccentric sexual regimens? (Dressing-room lore abounds with theories on whether singers should eschew sex before a performance and, if so, for how long. Most tenors seem to feel that two or three days of abstinence builds their strength. Several leading men in the 1940s, the story goes, were sabotaged by a shapely U.S. soprano who seduced them just before the curtain.) The only supernatural aid Pavarotti enlists to get himself onstage is a bent nail...