Word: count
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This is the season when we are reminded that you can safely and reliably count just about anything other than people. Census comes from the Latin censere, which, tellingly, does not mean count so much as estimate, and 2,500 years ago in Rome, people were already squirrelly about being estimated. The penalty for refusing to reveal how many people were in your household, how many slaves, how much livestock, was forfeiting it all and becoming a slave yourself. The Bible tells the story of God getting so mad at King David for ordering a census (granted, it was because...
...population to increase its representation, so they cleverly arranged that the first Census would also be used to spread around the costs of the Revolution. In 1790, 650 federal marshals on horseback began going house to house. It cost $45,000 and took a year and a half to count 3.9 million people...
...Lord of the Rings, which itself was a homage to classic Hollywood director Howard Hawks (Air Force, Rio Bravo). Perseus is a man's man; he forges his closest bonds first with his adoptive father, then with his comrades: they face the threat of death together and count on one another's wits and grit to stay alive. It means something when he says, "I'd rather die in the mud with these men than live forever...
Harvard’s pitchers ran into trouble throughout the game by getting behind in the count. It started early with senior Jonathan Strangio walking the Holy Cross lineup’s first three batters...
...strokes of luck from which science is made. The seismic shift continued to set off aftershocks almost every day, but Grant stayed to count her toads. When a full moon rose three days after the quake, a few toads risked a return. But then their numbers dropped again, remaining low until two days after the last major aftershock - a full 10 days after the first tremor. "It's never been reported to have happened before," says Grant. "Once they're breeding, then they're breeding. That...