Word: tenuousness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that the vote cannot be construed as a popularity poll, they obviously are concerned by the extent of public disenchantment. Before the vote, Whitlam had been considering whether to dissolve Parliament in May when election for half the Senate is due in a bid to strengthen Labor's tenuous position (Labor controls the lower house, the opposition the Senate). Such a dissolution now obviously could mean his defeat and a premature end to Australia's socialist experiment...
...Fearing that mankind would be poisoned as the earth passed through noxious gases in the comet's tail, many people bought gas masks and "comet pills" to prevent asphyxiation; they also staged a round of end-of-the-world parties. But the gases were far too tenuous to do any damage, and the earth remained unscathed. One famous prediction, however, did come to pass. Mark Twain, who had been born during the comet's previous visitation in 1835, and wrote that he expected to die during its next ("The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here...
PEASANTS IN traditional Vietnam never had been particularly wealthy, but they had owned their own land, produced their own food, and been guaranteed a measure of security by the village communal lands. The French stole their land and brutally forced them into a tenuous life on the edge of existence. To pay the frightful rents and skyrocketing taxes, peasants were forced to borrow from their landlords--at interest rates ranging from 100 to 3650 per cent. The peasant had to sell everything he owned--his water buffalo, old heirlooms, sometimes even his children--to keep his head above water...
...this show is confused. Law School fixation or not, there's no unity at all to 'the production--the tenuous Watergate connection, for example, is milked for all it's worth so that everything's thrown in. Sometimes the scatter-shot technique worked--there was a sense of absurdity and a liberal sprinkling of slapstick that occasionally legitimized the mess. Some of the music--especially when the score departed from the safe, cliched, quasi-forties style--like Laura Shapiro's mediocre "Onion," was completely out of context. The song could have been in any show, and should have been...
Terry-Thomas supplies the voice for Sir Hiss, who is appropriately gap-toothed, much to the advantage of his forever-flickering tongue. Peter Ustinov makes a pleasingly florid prince, his voice full of empty threat and tenuous regality...