Word: thumb
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...misfits are young men between the ages of 18 and 34, unemployed, with the equivalent of a ninth-grade education and a history of emotional and mental problems. Many wear tattoos made from colored toothbrushes melted down in prison. Some of the designs, hidden in the webbing between the thumb and forefinger, are emblems of criminal specialties: Madre and an arrow for murder, a star under three vertical bars for kidnaping...
...with Justice Department officials to voice concern that the scope of the investigation might end up crippling the nation's road-building industry. Says NAPA President John Gray: "We felt this was overkill." But Joseph Welsch, inspector general of the U.S. Transportation Department, says a reliable rule of thumb is that "rigged bids cost taxpayers about 15% more than unrigged bids," a margin of greed that could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in probable contractor overcharges in the past few years alone...
...nothing new about wife beating. It has always happened, everywhere. Often it is accepted as a natural if regrettable part of woman's status as her husband's property. Throughout history unlucky women have been subjected to the whims and brutality of their husbands. The colloquial phrase "rule of thumb" is supposedly derived from the ancient right of a husband to discipline his wife with a rod "no thicker than his thumb." In the U.S. the statistics reflect no unprecedented epidemic of domestic violence, but only a quite recent effort to collect figures?often inexact, but startling even when allowances...
...going to sell any land. All we are saying is that we are out from under any dollar goals set by the asset-management program." Or as one Interior official bluntly put it, "This way we can assure everyone we're not under the policy thumb of some green kids. Our program will just piddle along in low gear...
...potency not only to process mathematical data, like most computers today, but also to perform human-like reasoning: finding patterns, making assumptions, drawing inferences, reaching conclusions. Using a language called PROLOG (programming in logic), the new machines will hold intricate catalogues of knowledge that will contain the rules of thumb and mental shortcuts humans use to solve knotty problems...