Word: spasmed
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...Missouri's lieutenant governor, Roger B. Wilson, assumed Carnahan's duties at the statehouse when the news hit. If in a spasm of grief Missouri voters elect Carnahan (the deadline for changing the ballot passed on Friday), Wilson, a Democrat, will have the power to appoint a two-year replacement. Wilson, by the way, is not in the contest to succeed Carnahan, having already decided to drop out of politics to become an investment banker...
...should we be concerned about the current spasm of extinction, which has been accelerated by the inexorable expansion of agriculture and industry? Is it necessary to try to slow down a process that has been going on forever...
...that of light (see "Will We Discover Another Universe?", in this issue). Cosmologists take inflation seriously because it resolves problems that bedeviled older versions of the Big Bang, but inflation also has implications for the study of cosmic destiny. Among them is that the force that drove the inflationary spasm, sometimes tagged with the Greek letter lambda after its designation in Einstein's general-relativity equations, might not have subsided altogether back when the inflationary hiccup ended. Instead, it might still be there, lurking in empty space and urging expansion along, like an usher politely shooing playgoers back into...
...behind me on the right, going well over 80. The driver paused when he drew abreast. He gave me the finger - not once but repeatedly, stabbing the air in a pantomime of nasty proctological hydraulics. With his other hand, he flicked the steering wheel to the left in a spasm of menace, as if he meant to run me off the road. A complete stranger wanted me dead - or anyway, he played at it for a moment. At 75 mph, I had blocked the left lane. I had made him late for an IPO, I suppose...
...greed and lust are self-evident: They come with their rewards. Anger is a dramatic and astringent passion. But what's the payoff? Righteous anger may be ennobling, sometimes, but mostly rage merely disfigures the one who is angry. Anger delights in destruction; it arrives as a blind spasm, even as an orgasmic release, like sex firing off in an evil dimension...