Word: twitch
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...Auricular fibrillation, when the heart's upper chambers twitch irregularly and contract too rapidly, is frightening to victims: in brief attacks it may cause a "heart in the mouth" feeling and palpitations; over longer periods it can lead to heart failure. It is also difficult to diagnose because early attacks often pass before a doctor can get there. A unique study of 113 men and women of five generations in one family-compiled by Dr. William L. Gould of Albany, N.Y. and reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine-shows that in an occasional case fibrillation neither causes disability...
After a while, Stravinsky's intention-the intention of writing purely abstract music-wins out, and the images vanish. What remains is a sense of irony or of elegy. The listener's mind wanders, but a foot begins to tap, a hand to twitch in time to the music. Rhythm alone, motion for its own sake, take over. And that is the clue to what George Balanchine has done by way of choreography. Unlike his previous "neoclassic" collaborations with Stravinsky (Apollo, Orpheus), this work is abstract dance: there are no costumes or scenery and the Greek title, Agon...
...ingenuous travel book, partly a collection of journalistic jottings about adventures that are known to everyone who has ever hitchhiked more than a hundred miles in the U.S. The book's importance lies in Author Kerouac's attempt to create a rationale for the fevered young who twitch around the nation's jukeboxes and brawl pointlessly in the midnight streets. He sees his characters as "the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing...
...reminded by Stevenson's speeches of the oldtime patent medicine man who used to drive into a town, gather a crowd, and after softening them up with a funny story and a few wisecracks would harangue the crowd with spellbinding oratory that so magnified every itch, twitch and minor pain inherent in every human being that half his listeners thought they had incipient cancer, tuberculosis or at least a chronic ulcer. Stevenson's speeches are filled with the same wisecracks, half-truths, distortions and exaggerations designed to scare the susceptible into believing that the Democratic Magic Elixir...
...Under the Communists, not even the highest official is exempt. In his dossier are recorded the youthful mistake, the relative's sin, the forgotten careless statement. The victim may walk free as air, but the dossier is like a terrible hook, invisibly lodged in his vitals. With a twitch of the string, it can bring a man down. It can even humble a nation...