Word: backward
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hard to argue that Germans have a greater genetic predisposition to violence than other peoples. These days most Germans are careful to avoid any aggressive display. Says a foreign ministry official: "We know we're the most powerful country in Western Europe. But we must bend over backward not to use that power." In fact, the terrorist activity is a lefthanded tribute to democratic institutions. A repressive society would not have tolerated the intellectual dissent that led to terrorism...
...left behind in the starving Bantustans. This policy is so repugnant that it has even been rejected by all but two of the Bantustan leaders picked by the regime. Blacks want to preserve their culture, but as South Africans, members of an integrated society, not as forcibly separated and backward "tribes...
Newton bases his charges on a meticulous examination of Ptolemy's work, which revealed an internal consistency that would not have been possible with that ancient astronomer's techniques. Newton also conducted a backward extrapolation from modern astronomical data, which demonstrated certain anomalies in Ptolemy's observations. Ptolemy claimed, for example, that he had observed an autumnal equinox at 2 p.m. on Sept. 25, A.D. 132; he stressed that he had measured the phenomenon "with the greatest care." But, says Newton, back calculation from modern tables shows that an observer in Alexandria, Egypt, where Ptolemy made...
...difference? To Newton, the evidence suggests that Ptolemy accepted the observations of an earlier astronomer, Hipparchus, without checking them against his own. Newton feels that Ptolemy may also have followed a technique used by mediocre students throughout history: he worked backward to prove the results he wanted to get, and sometimes made up his data. Whatever he did, Ptolemy got away with it for 18 centuries...
Other Afrikaners talk about the sacrifices that lie ahead. Implicit in these phrases may be a startling notion: that the Afrikaners, short of the long-predicted Armageddon, might conceivably be prepared to hitch up their ox wagons once again and retreat backward toward the old Boer republics and the Cape, striking some sort of bargain in power sharing or land sharing with rivaling black nationalism. Any such solution would lie in the distant future. For the moment, there is only a sense throughout the beleaguered white tribe that the present system cannot hold, but that the prescriptions decreed...