Word: tenuousness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...asks us to forgive him. He speaks to the nation with tears in his eyes, admitting that he has caused pain to his family and to the American people. Yet at the same time, he sends his lawyers into both the legal and political arenas with an argument so tenuous and so precise in their hair-splitting that he draws criticism even from the Democratic leadership in Congress...
...found in the dictionary." Although Deane himself uses a sufficient number of twentyfive-cent words to be considered a "literary" author, for whatever that's worth, his style is as down-to-earth as any country boy's. His lovely prose reads effortlessly. Another writer would drown such a tenuous, fragile plot with the dense description Deane favors, but Deane makes observations like "a pulse passes up and down from my head to my toes as though someone had slashed me from behind" or "the armchairs on either side of the fire [were] now mute and emptied of all confidences...
...territory restlessness, quits his job and hops a steamer for New Orleans, hellbent to board the next boat for the Amazon's mouth. But no boats are headed there, then or later, so young Samuel Clemens is stuck with writing about the Mississippi. There is only the most tenuous and delightful of connections with another kid, in Defiance, Ohio, a century later. This fellow, named Tommy Thompson, is an inspired, perhaps even crazed, tinkerer. He conceives that used frying oil could power engines and rigs a car that actually burns the stuff. He's set for a run across...
Although Harvard is beginning to make an effort to provide support networks and discussion for undergraduates through the Women's Initiative Project, funded by a $1.25 million gift by Jamie Houghton '58 and Maisie Houghton '62, undergraduate women have been short-changed for years by the tenuous division of duties between Harvard and Radcliffe. With Radcliffe as an excuse, Harvard has too often ignored its responsibilities to female undergraduates. It must now address specific shortcomings in its institutional attitude...
...course, so did Suharto. But Habibie's rather tenuous grip on power -- and his early unpopularity with students and opposition leaders -- could give the IMF crucial leverage when it comes to prodding him into difficult decisions. "For now the IMF will wait a while," says Branegan, "and hope that with Suharto gone, Indonesians will be more willing to bite the bullet next time around...