Word: reactional
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Langewiesche’s book, American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center met with critical acclaim, but has angered many by portraying some firefighters in an uncomplimentary light. Among other criticisms, Langewiesche alleges that some firefighters engaged in looting while the first of the Twin Towers burned. The outraged reaction of firefighters and others, although understandable, seems to be primarily a knee-jerk attempt to maintain the status of firefighters as transcendent heroes, even in the face of evidence that indicates some of them to be less than perfect...
...received a letter telling me I was selected. My first reaction was that I was kind of annoyed that they were asking me to pay a $50 fee.” said Bernd H. J. Beber ’03, a government concentrator. “It’s supposed to be a good thing and then they ask you for money...
...rest of the time I spent in the cemetery I walked unsteadily: My knees wouldn’t work properly. And I thought: I am not changed. It is impossible, I think, to intellectually reconcile oneself with death or disaster, because real fear inspires a visceral reaction. This is why events like those of Sept. 11, although they change the structure of our government and inspire much philosophizing, can never prepare us to accept another disaster; another disaster would find us as terrified, and as bewildered at our terror, as I was at the top of that tower...
...ocean away, other intelligence officials were playing the tape to some of the several hundred lesser-ranking al-Qaeda detainees held in pens at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And the reaction they got was even scarier: a senior U.S. official told TIME that detainees said some passages could be a call to action. That interpretation, along with reports from informants and intercepted communications flooding CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., sent waves of anxiety through the intelligence community...
...adults may suffer from some form of sensory defensiveness. One person avoids driving at night because he can't tolerate headlights reflecting in his rearview mirror. Another can't relax until she washes a musty-smelling dishrag in the next room. Says Heller: "Sensory defensiveness is when your reaction to stimuli starts to govern the choices you make in your life...