Word: veneered
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...many, such explanations of noble deeds are cold comfort. But Harvard Anthropologist Melvin J. Konner sees a bright side to reciprocal altruism. Sociobiologists, he says, "have in fact uplifted [human nature] by showing that altruism, long thought to be a thin cultural veneer, belongs instead to the deepest part of our being, produced by countless aeons of consistent evolution...
...number of American universities have been no less eager than their government to help the Shah polish his regime's veneer of respectability--which is ironic, given the Shah's persecution of Iranian intellectuals. Harvard, one of the worst offenders, has signed contracts worth more than $1.5 million with the Iranian government since 1974, promising to help the Shah with urban development, health and educational projects. Edward L. Keenan '57, the new dean of the graduate school, is also a member of the governing board of the university named after the present Shah's father, who was arguably even more...
Speed lay in little pools all over the coffee table's scarred mahogany veneer. Small white tablets, slouched in little nests, elbowing for room rolling off on to the floor. Speed. Methedrine slows everything down; people talk slower, move slower, time passes more slowly. There was a perverse logic to it--you needed more time, but the Law of the Conservation of Time prevented that, you couldn't make time. But you could stretch out the time you did have, slow it down, construct the illusion of creating more time. Everything slowed down. The perverse part was only one thing...
...Responsibilities was, at the very least, discouraging. Aside from the specific problems with its composition and procedures, the CRR stands as a symbol of the Faculty's paternalistic, perhaps even repressive attitude toward students. By bowing to the Faculty's desire that the CRR's kangaroo courts attain a veneer of legitimacy through token student participation, the freshmen who voted to end the boycott displayed a sadly misplaced confidence in the good will of the Faculty...
That's fanaticism. And Henry Miller is not fanatic about anything, not even sex. Curiously enough, under the macho veneer of the critic's voice lies a kind of prudery. That Miller sublimates murderous inclinations into lust is plausible. But this camphorous old wives' tale--or old codger's tale, say--evinces fear of female sexuality. Mailer's near hysterical protestation of a woman's weakness fronts for an appalled reaction to her spongy, devouring vagina and the ballooning mystery of her womb...