Word: threshold
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Prophet: "The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind...
More Lift, Less Drag. The nuclear airship's size-177 ft. longer and 37 ft. greater in diameter than the Hindenburg-would give it an added advantage over even the largest of the old dirigibles, which Morse says were "just at the threshold of efficient performance." Doubling the length of a dirigible, for example, increases its weight four times, but provides an eightfold increase in lift...
...Thomas Pynchon (Lippincott; 183 pages; $3.95), the author of V, is a metaphysical thriller in the form of a pornographic comic strip. The heroine, a girl named Oedipa Maas, one day finds her "Chevy parked at the center of an odd, religious instant. A revelation trembled just past the threshold of her understanding, a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meanings, of an intent to communicate." She pursues the revelation, and finds herself involved with a mysterious organization named Tristero. She pursues the secret of Tristero, and finds herself involved with such improbable characters as Stanley Koteks, Bloody Chiclitz and Genghis Cohen...
Highest Evidence. The hope is that such questions will lead to voluntary confessions, which have always been highly valued in U.S. courts. Whether it is the spontaneous blurt, the "threshold" confession immediately after the crime or the arrest ("Officer, I just killed my wife"), or the eventual uncoerced admission made by a suspect, the voluntary confession usually needs no corroboration for conviction. It is "the highest form of evidence," the legal analogue of the religious confession, although it may lead to execution rather than absolution...
...Practical. A potato-faced pug, noted mainly for his high threshold of pain and his mastery of the "upper-cup"-a left hook to an opponent's private parts-Chuvalo was ranked tenth among the World Boxing Association's top ten heavyweights. True, he had never been knocked down in 47 pro fights, but he had lost eleven, including three of the last eight-to Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell and an Argentine named Eduardo Corletti. Sportswriters called the fight "the mismatch of the decade"; bookmakers installed Clay as the 1-to-7 favorite-and then refused to take...