Word: upright
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...YORK—Half an hour earlier, only the right upright had prevented freshman Brian Rogers from scoring a wondergoal in front of family and friends. The Bronxville, N.Y.-native fired a rocket with his left foot from 30 yards out in the 48th minute, only to see his shot cannon off the post—the second time in the game that the woodwork had kept him from giving the Harvard men’s soccer team the lead...
This tableau demolishes one aspect of what had been conventional evolutionary wisdom. Paleoanthropologists once thought that what got our ancestors walking on two legs in the first place was a change in climate that transformed African forest into savanna. In such an environment, goes the reasoning, upright-standing primates would have had the advantage over knuckle walkers because they could see over tall grasses to find food and avoid predators. The fact that Lucy's species sometimes lived in a more wooded environment began to undermine that theory. The fact that Ardi walked upright in a similar environment many hundreds...
...interesting mosaic" with certain uniquely human characteristics: bipedalism, for one. Ardi stood 47 in. (120 cm) tall and weighed about 110 lb. (50 kg), making her roughly twice as heavy as Lucy. The structure of Ardi's upper pelvis, leg bones and feet indicates she walked upright on the ground, while still retaining the ability to climb. Her foot had an opposable big toe for grasping tree limbs but lacked the flexibility that apes use to grab and scale tree trunks and vines ("Gorilla and chimp feet are almost like hands," says Lovejoy), nor did it have the arch that...
...aftermath of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Part II: "As I walked in a St. Patrick's Day parade in Lawrence in March 1969, a burst of popping firecrackers caused me to freeze in my tracks and prepare to dive to the pavement. I stayed upright by an act of will. Years later, on another occasion, I was enjoying a walk in the sunshine near the Capitol with Tom Rollins - then my chief of staff - when a car backfired down the street. Tom recalls that I was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Turning around, he saw me flattened...
...roared into the depot he was standing at the head of the aisle. He came lightly down the metal steps into balmy air and diesel fumes, and feeling in himself the potent allegiance of fate, he pushed open the door to the lobby, where unkempt sleepers slumped upright on the benches.” The novel, like the film, seems to end too soon: Munger, for the reader, is caught in a state of uncertainty. Whether it’s the purgatory of domesticity or the slow hell of fight-damage, Gardener gives the reader an interstitial space where...