Word: wasps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plate. According to Beer, Darwin used this language because he believed that living creatures were difficult to understand, and acted on more than just instinct. He believed that oysters and polyps and plants possessed some free will. Beer paraphrased Darwin’s response to a colleague who believed wasps to be mechanical rather than conscious beings: “Good heavens, is it disputed that a wasp has this much intellect?” Darwin was also intensely interested in the consciousness of other humans, including children and indigenous people. Near the time Darwin wrote about the free will...
...produced ethnic dolls in the past, including a few it might like to forget, like the 1981 Oriental Barbie or the 1967 Colored Francie. But other than the fact that there is a brunette version, very little about the new Shanghai Barbie doll is different. Same long legs, same wasp waist. Barbie may be entering her golden years, but Mattel is betting there's life...
When he comes to the door, he's in his customary Wasp regalia, a button- down cotton shirt and white suede shoes. Quantities of nicotine and bourbon have produced his voice, a liquid Southern baritone that reminds you of his friend Shelby Foote. It's a voice he dispenses in small doses. What that means is that he can stretch a sentence into next week while he deliberates on his next syllable...
...most gratifying thing about the new George Plimpton biography, George, Being George (Random House; 423 pages), is that it is nearly as much fun as George Plimpton. For the bulk of his 76 years, Plimpton--the Wasp bohemian who quarterbacked the Detroit Lions, danced at Truman Capote's Black and White Ball, set off more fireworks than a thousand juvenile delinquents and edited America's greatest literary journal for 50 years before his death in 2003--was educated society's unofficial mayor of good times. Who else could box a few rounds with Archie Moore, trade stanzas with Marianne Moore...
Unlike the typical '60s reminiscence, Mad Men doesn't have a baby-boomer perspective. (Creator Matthew Weiner, 42, was born after the boomer cutoff.) Its sensibility is closer to artifacts of its time like The Apartment or John Cheever's Wasp-character-study stories. In Mad Men, the boomers are a market for Clearasil or the children of the Drapers and their friends, largely unseen and unheard. (In a new episode, Don instructs his grade-school-age daughter how to mix a Tom Collins for guests...