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Similar hemorrhagic epidemics appeared in Manila and Bangkok in the mid '50s. Singapore was hit in 1960, and Bangkok has undergone another siege this summer. The current disease is a viral variant of dengue (pronounced dengghee), a less virulent malady that has some different symptoms (aching muscles and joints, no hemorrhaging). The affliction is sometimes called "dandy fever"-for the peculiar mincing gait of those whose joints have been affected...
...from dust and lead fumes (Roman Naturalist Pliny was the source). Three readers were baffled by the word glitch in one of our moon stories (it is a modernized term for World War II's famed gremlin); another was having trouble finding the word aelurophile (it is a variant of ailurophile, meaning lover of cats). Ofttimes the department is called upon to settle arguments-last year two college roommates quibbled about who makes more money, pro footballers or auto racers (the top stars are about even-in the six-figure range). Both lawyers-and prisoners-by the score request...
...rapidly changing world, men apparently need a clear image of the "enemy" responsible for their anxiety and frustration. Hence the recent discovery of something called "the Establishment." A more recent American variant is "the military-industrial complex," familiarly known as MIC. The idea descends from Marx's "ruling class" of capitalists, with their grip on government and the cultural "superstructure." Neither "the Establishment" nor "the MIC" was coined by a Marxist, but the eager way in which these names, twisted from their original meaning, were embraced indicates the desperate psychological need of many Americans for "a class enemy...
Dadd fled to France, but was arrested when he stabbed a fellow passenger in a diligence going to Fontainebleau. He was committed to London's historic Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, which has given its name to the language as "bedlam" (a Middle English variant of "Bethlehem...
According to defense experts, Jack Ruby was suffering from a "psychomotor variant" seizure when he killed Lee Harvey Oswald. But prosecution witnesses answered that Ruby's brain waves were "normal," with only "very slight" aberrations, not enough to suggest seizures. "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo was an extreme schizophrenic under an irresistible impulse at the moment of his alleged crimes, defense witnesses said; the equally impressive prosecution allies testified that DeSalvo was suffering a "defect of character but not a psychosis...