his literary voice was so protean (variable, mutable, _labile)
Not only was he physically forbidding with his punctilious, almost Amish appearance
Donald Barthelme lol
Robert Axelrod [...] found that for a social norm to become established [...] society must also and especially disapprove of those who fail to show their disapproval of the offending behavior. This second-order norm enforcement mechanism is called a 'metanorm'
Perfect verticality is a completely unachievable abstraction but it does not stop bricklayers continually checking that walls and lintels are as vertical and level as they can possibly be
good point
imposing 'structural adjustment' agreements: drastic cuts to public-sector spending and the sell-off of public-sector assets to fund debt-servicing
