Word: thumbings
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...weeks passed before the provincial police inspector, a man named Alvarez, arrived at the scene of the crime. Clueless after a search of several hours, he turned to leave the hut-and saw on the door, dramatized by a splash of sunlight, the blood-brown print of a human thumb. Alvarez promptly recalled some reports he had heard of a new method of identification based on fingerprints, and within an hour, assisted only by an ink pad and a magnifying glass, he had triumphantly identified the killer of the children: their mother...
...done something far more significant. The double murder in the fishing village was the first capital crime ever solved by the comparison of fingerprints, and that solution constituted a major breakthrough for the infant science of criminology. In less than a century, that science has developed from rule of thumb into an enormously intricate medico-legal discipline, and the story of its development, as described by Jurgen Thorwald (The Century of the Surgeon) with impressive literary and scientific competence, is a tale of blood and bloodhounds, wills and pills, pathologists and psychopaths. For sheer suspense and wallowing aceldama...
...causing the renaissance? The English have a political rule of thumb that cricket fanciers are Tories, while soccer fans are Labor; in the field of music the distinctions are not as clear-cut. Opera fans are probably traditionalists, secretly perhaps even monarchists. They are probably less concerned with facts and figures than devotees of the symphony or solo instruments, who often glory in the mathematical aspects of music. Opera lovers are also apt to be more intellectual and less sentimental than ballet fans, who are satisfied with generally second-rate musical scores and graceful or athletic bodily gyrations...
Union bosses wield personal power far beyond most politicians and businessmen. Huge national headquarters staffs are answerable only to the national leader, and until fairly recently, it was as rare for a major union chief to be voted out of office as it is for a baseball player to thumb an umpire from the ballpark. The effects of the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 are changing some of that. Among other things, the law required that unions overhaul their constitutions so as to give rank-and-file members more protection against fraud and coercion in voting on their leadership. Thanks...
Pakistan, which means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu, is a country without a history and with very little identity. In the west, 86% of the people are illiterate, and most are under the thumb of zamindars, or landlords. In the east, the literacy rate is somewhat better, but the population density among the highest in the world. Two men have built the nation: Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the father of his country, and Mohammed Ayub Khan, who has ruled one way or another since 1958. Under Ayub, there has been an industrial surge that looks more spectacular than...