Word: rigorous
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...stick to the ground, a distance of about three feet. Evidently we were not meant to see this part of the performance, or it would all have been done in the open. The performer ... is under a trance or stupor, and becomes stiff as if in a state of rigor mortis. When Subbayah was back on the ground his assistants carried him over to us and asked if we would try to bend his limbs. Even with the assistance of three coolies we were unable to do so. After Subbayah had been massaged for five minutes and had cold water...
Scientists would deny that Subbayah's feat violates any physical or biological principle. Fakirs can induce cataleptic rigidity in a limb or in the whole body; fakirs are often unbelievably strong. When the tent walls close behind him, all that Subbayah conceivably has to do is to induce rigor, leaving one arm free to inch his body little by little up the stick. If the stick is off the vertical and slants away from his log-like body he can hang easily from its top, provided his centre of gravity is directly above the point where the stick enters...
...caught in suspicious circumstances and hard put to it to talk himself out") on trial for defrauding the Government, his grandfather's house in a country town. On his way to Russia he found that London now looked "much like Chicago." (And on his way back, through France: "Rigor mortis has set in in Paris.") Prepared to be sympathetic with Russia, he discovered many a Soviet custom that turned his U. S. stomach. In Moscow, he says, it is true that people always look over their shoulders before hazarding a political remark; he got the habit himself. The suppression...
...systems of determining grades. But this variety, far from being the spice of life, is rather the fly in the undergraduate's ointment. Some courses have schemes which insure justice and impartiality. Others, however, make of each section man an arbitrary despot. The natural variation in the rigor of these lieutenants is translated into a vast difference among the standards obtaining within a single course. Distinctions among students of the same merit necessarily follow...
...Centro in California's Imperial Valley the temperature last week rose to 122° F. Stepping out of doors was like walking into a blast furnace's draft. Snakes and lizards, whose muscles stiffen with rigor caloris at 104°, died. But insects, which can function at 147°, and animals, with a system of maintaining body temperatures at normal regardless of climate, pursued their ordinary activities, as did the men, women and children of El Centro. Women dressed in organdie; men went without coats. Everyone wore hats to prevent sunstroke. But of heat stroke there was no fear...