Word: rigidities
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Back in 1924, when she and Christopher Robin went down to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, A. A. Milne's Alice sympathetically remarked: "A soldier's life is terrible hard." Neither she nor England had seen anything yet. In those days the rigid young sentries in their scarlet tunics and high black bearskins were symbols of imperial glory: Englishmen and foreigners alike respectfully held their tongues and kept their distance. But after World War II was won with a minimum of pomp and circumstance, and the blitz took away war's glamour...
Even London's Conservative and independent press had misgivings about so rigid a course. Said the Economist in one of its sharpest attacks on the government to date: the Devlin report "was testimony to British justice and fair play. It could even have been regarded as a feather in the cap of the government that set [it] up. Instead, the government's response has been roughly, 'Tell the truth and shame the Devlin.' Politics has overridden the appearance of detached justice. Mr. Macmillan has involved the whole credit of himself and his government...
...lighting of museums is too changeable, except in dime-bright climates, and artificial lighting is too colorless and rigid. Le Corbusier's solution at Tokyo is a radical blend of both. Over the central gallery he raised a huge, tentlike, triangular skylight, glassed on its north side. The smaller galleries have long, rectangular skylights. And to illuminate the dark corners, spotlights are set into the ceilings. Some Japanese critics complain that walking through the building ''gives one a very mixed feeling, like a repetitive alternation of night and day." More spotlights should level out the effect...
...experts are almost unanimous, too, in believing that wherever cancer appears, its essential nature is the same: a growth of cells that have rebelled against the body's rigid chemical control. Normally, hormones and enzymes work together in a delicate harmony of checks and balances to regulate cell growth. Once the cancerous process begins, it tends to snowball. The abnormal cells consume more than their share of cell foods, can flourish in a victim who is starving, or actually cause him to starve. Like juvenile delinquents, they grab what they want, and never grow up to assume the duties...
...above shipping second-grade wheat when top quality was ordered. Two British mills, which were taking 1,000,000 bushels a month, became so disgusted with the poor quality of the wheat that they stopped buying. The Wheat Growers Association persuaded them to start again by promising rigid quality controls on shipments...