Word: sobering
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...members were given a speech by the president, welcomed into the Society, and then asked to read "parts," or papers on various topics. Later on, the ceremony was elaborated into a parody of the Oral Exams. Nowadays, the initiations are preceded by a cocktail hour, and a semi-sober group shouts nonsense while the novitiate attempts to read his part. It is usually not even witty, and it is certainly never an academic discipline. There has recently been a move to reform these affairs, and the next initiation is expected to return to the ideal of the days of Kittredge...
...Anonymity is to Alec," says a friend, "what the Channel is to England." His second line of defense is an impenetrable English hedge of middle-class respectability. Sewed up in a sober suit of excellent cut, clamped in a boiled collar, braced with his faithful brolly, Guinness looks as safe as the Tower...
What will sell cars in the future? Says Researcher Cheskin: "The sober look, the dignified form, the basically functional gadget, the single color or truly two-tone color. Useless gadgets do not appeal to the 1958 shoppers and will appeal to the 1959 and 1960 shoppers even less. The jukebox effect will disappear. Elaborate ornamentation of chrome and multiple colors will be discarded. Finally, consumers are also beginning to resent forced obsolescence. When yearly fashions were limited to women's apparel, there was almost universal acceptance. The public did not resist the yearly car design changes. Then other hard...
...will never set the world on fire or even make it smoke." In all his 35 years as a foreign-news specialist, Gunther has never learned a foreign language. His critics also take him to task for deliberately passing up fundamentals for froth. Inside Africa, chided the sober Times of India, has only "one page dealing with the Moroccan economy, and four giving an account of a dinner with El Glaoui...
...attempting so huge a task, and glibness in its execution. In fact, though the book is sprinkled with such minor bobbles as his reference to a nonexistent 25-kopek piece, these are heavily outweighed by his sound reporting, his artful wrap-up of others' findings, and his sober conclusions. Unlike most books on Russia. Gunther's Soviet survey is fortified with perspective gained on three other professional sojourns between 1928 and 1939 for as much as five months at a time. Chuckles Gunther: "When people ask how that s.o.b. dared visit a new country for three days...