Comments by jwjarvis

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  • The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer - all orders of men look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to the pleasing reward of their toils.

    September 16, 2010

  • Man in general seems a deceitful, tricky, dangerous, perfidious animal

    September 16, 2010

  • the once vibrant health care alternative of lodge practice, which less than two decades before had inspired trepidation throughout the medical establishment, had virtually disappeared

    September 14, 2010

  • Most commentary from both sides of this conflict indicates that these sanctions were highly effective.

    September 14, 2010

  • The discernment of lodge patients was exemplified by their selective patronization of medical services.

    September 14, 2010

  • It gave patients the wherewithal to use medical services more as a varied menu.

    September 14, 2010

  • empowered them with the necessary economic clout to break free from the confining view that health care was merely a generic good.

    September 14, 2010

  • One doctor blamed excessive and unnecessary housecalls for engendering fears in the doctor “that he will lose his position if he fails to answer every call

    September 14, 2010

  • denounced the willingness of members to quibble about fees and diagnosis

    September 14, 2010

  • The members who used these services anticipated by several decades the active patient now very much in vogue.

    September 14, 2010

  • Among the possible infractions were failure to report at meetings

    September 14, 2010

  • An incompetent or arbitrary doctor could prove fatal to actuarial soundness

    September 14, 2010

  • By no means was this pro forma.

    September 14, 2010

  • These schools had two salient features.

    September 14, 2010

  • While as a description of reality this was probably accurate, it fails as an indictment.

    September 14, 2010

  • One leading critic excoriated such individuals as “inordinately selfish and avaricious men who have no neighbors in the profession

    September 14, 2010

  • unless the physician so selected, attends to the duties devolving upon him he is quickly brought to account.

    September 14, 2010

  • have the right of franchise in electing the lodge physician, so have they in deposing him

    September 14, 2010

  • The fact that lodges could entice doctors with a large and stable market left them well positioned, as one opponent put it, to purchase medical services at wholesale and sell at retail.

    September 14, 2010

  • It gave patients an opportunity once a year to compare notes on the medical records of both the challenger and incumbent.

    September 14, 2010

  • these professional critiques can be supplemented and compared to the still extant defenses written by doctors and leaders of fraternal societies.

    September 14, 2010

  • victory went to those doctors best able to ingratiate themselves with key players in the leadership

    September 14, 2010

  • Dr. W. F. Zierath of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, put the matter succinctly when he chided certain fellow members of the profession

    September 14, 2010

  • this opposition represented fear for the future survival of the dominant fee-for- service remuneration.

    September 14, 2010

  • there was a persistent need to grapple with appeals from individuals who had fallen in arrears.

    September 14, 2010

  • Those members derelict in these duties had to pay a one-dollar fine.

    September 14, 2010

  • While the Foresters eschewed nationalism, their leading rival for lodge practice, the Fraternal Order of Eagles was almost a caricature of apple-pie Americanism.

    September 14, 2010

  • Foresters were quintessential internationalists.

    September 14, 2010

  • Instead, the issue on the table is whether the behemoths we answer to will be purely public or public-private partnerships.

    September 14, 2010

  • The main impetus to creating the licensing systems on which artificial scarcity depends came from the medical profession early in the twentieth century.

    September 14, 2010

  • No matter how simple and straightforward the procedure, you can’t hire someone who’s adequately trained just to perform the service you need; you’ve got to pay amortization on a full med school education and residency.

    September 14, 2010

  • business acumen

    September 8, 2010

  • Esas dos son la comidilla de la vecindad. (talk of the town)

    September 5, 2010

  • Since 1954 the Ivy League has been the following universities: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale.

    September 5, 2010

  • a high-ranking member of the clergy who either is an ordinary or ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from Latin prælatus, the past participle of præferre, literally, "carry before," or "to be set above, or over," or "to prefer," hence a prelate is one set over others.

    September 4, 2010

  • an estate inherited from one's father or ancestor

    September 4, 2010

  • states something is true by definition.

    "governments can keep secrets when they are allowed to keep secrets"

    "caution is good unless it's bad"

    September 2, 2010

  • public/private

    rights/benefits

    large scale/small scale

    independence/interdependence

    individual/collective

    voluntary/involuntary

    local/federal

    domestic/international

    long term/short term

    objective/subjective

    permanent/changing

    socioeconomic/political

    rights/privileges

    children/adults

    needs/wants

    traditional/innovative

    wartime/peacetime

    September 2, 2010

  • Honeydew is a sugar-rich sticky substance, secreted by aphids and some scale insects as they feed on plant sap. When their mouthpart penetrates the phloem, the sugary, high-pressure liquid is forced out of the gut's terminal opening.

    September 2, 2010

  • Rapid removal of acetylcholine from the circulation would inactivate parasympathetic stimulation of digestive secretion consonant with rapid arousal of the animal in an emergency

    September 2, 2010

  • an irreversible action that has happened before those affected by it knew of its existence.

    September 1, 2010

  • His life was one of indefatigable labor.

    August 31, 2010

  • He mentioned the man as an aside, giving me a rundown of the latest attempt to force contact with him

    August 29, 2010

  • Advanced societies invariably have subsumed whatever indigenous populations they've encountered

    August 29, 2010

  • prays i.e. one who speaks with God, not necessarily bothering with requests but one who expresses gratitude for life and what one can learn in hard times

    August 28, 2010

  • Nietzsche

    August 20, 2010

  • I'm very much in need of a wordnik SRS (spaced repetition system) App!

    August 15, 2010

  • Anki might be one of the coolest things I've found this year.

    July 27, 2010

  • Didn't the etymology tab used to be at the top? What happened to that? and will Wordnik.com ever collaborate with etymonline.com?

    July 14, 2010

  • Greek word kinein, to move.

    July 13, 2010

  • diminution of activity, dilution, thinner, weaker, reduction of virulence

    July 4, 2010

  • Because society has drifted from the spiritual moorings of calling, it has developed some odd and distorted doctrines about finding your calling.

    June 29, 2010

  • is a neo-Latin word meaning "before the event"

    June 21, 2010

  • how to do you split .flv video?!

    June 13, 2010

  • Our research has shown that multitasking can have an insidious effect on learning.

    June 9, 2010

  • Dr. Summers was pilloried for even suggesting the idea, and the critics took up his challenge to refute the hypothesis.

    June 9, 2010

  • One perennial question that personality testing could help to answer is whether hard work can make up for differences in cognitive ability.

    June 9, 2010

  • polemic:

    1. A controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine.

    2. A person engaged in or inclined to controversy, argument, or refutation.

    June 1, 2010

  • In order for a solar system to form, it must be in a very magnetic area, so that the matters can be "Quickened". Meaning, yes, they may have become matter, that ain't magnetic, but the process, the pulling of matter, condensing it, created the mass, therefore determining the weight understandable to a mind. This misperception should be deciphered at least, if it isn't already.

    May 30, 2010

  • Turner, however, isn't despondent about humanity's quest for gravitons. He thinks we'll eventually ensnare a few of the pesky particles hiding in the shadows of more easily detected particles.

    May 30, 2010

  • The Oxford Companion to the English Language is a thousand-page cornucopia covering virtually every aspect of the English language

    May 27, 2010

  • Anybody know how to get online access to "McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs" ?

    May 27, 2010

  • "Ooh, I'm really scared. No! Don't! There's a- a peck here with an acorn pointed at me!" speaking to Willow

    May 26, 2010

  • pectoralis major

    May 26, 2010

  • a public university, while perhaps not carrying quite the cachet as a private school,...

    May 26, 2010

  • The osteopathic philosophy posits that there is a unity between a living organism's anatomy and physiology.

    May 26, 2010

  • Now, of course, much of what osteopathic medicine has always espoused is rapidly becoming part of all medical training.

    May 26, 2010

  • The case based model teaches through clinical vignettes.

    May 26, 2010

  • Thanks John, hyperwords is pretty cool.

    what's the word on incorporating a thesaurus and alphabetizing the dictionary? and providing links within the dictionary for easy navigation e.g. T, Te, Th,....

    May 25, 2010

  • ETC Group, a group based in Canada, called for a global moratorium on synthetic biology

    May 25, 2010

  • I just got another idea which has hopefully and most likely already crossed your mind. Maybe you can make a deal with firefox so wordnik users can easily post example sentences to wordnik. Maybe we wordnik users don't have to wait for the wordnik admin's to post more example sentences, maybe we can help you do it. Example sentences are more useful when they're in the context the user is interested in, right?

    May 25, 2010

  • Scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for a generation, producing a menagerie of genetically engineered plants and animals.

    May 25, 2010

  • exercise your prerogative

    May 23, 2010

  • the same sense of dread animates Matthew Crawford’s jeremiad, just as it animated The Crafstman

    May 19, 2010

  • work encompassed by the "stochastic arts"--those that "diagnose and fix things that are variable, complex, and not of our own making." He includes in this category mechanics and medical practitioners and those with other occupations which, because of the constant risk of failure, at least potentially prevent self-absorption, and instead "cultivate not creativity, but the less glamorous virtue of attentiveness"

    May 19, 2010

  • The health care system in this country is very convoluted.

    May 13, 2010

  • wordnik button for google toolbar does not work

    May 11, 2010

  • Any developers out there that would like to collaborate?

    April 26, 2010

  • I recently started playing 'words with friends' on the iphone. I'm trying to think of an innovative iphone game that could be developed with wordnik. A way to share new words with friends, test each others vocabulary...

    April 26, 2010

  • iPhone app!!!

    April 26, 2010

  • how about wordnik flashcards?

    April 24, 2010

  • is there a wordnik iphone app?

    April 24, 2010

  • Therefore, the increased SHBG under conditions of fat metabolism is anathema to the steroid-suppression of SHBG release model.

    April 24, 2010

  • Also, are you going to turn this site into a social site down the road? I hope it can remain simple and professional. I would hate this site if it had tons of advertising on it. But it would be cool to be able to do more with the Zeitgeist page. I like how you can view recently listed words. There is a lot of worthless stuff on there though, a lot of dumb comments, useless words.

    Can you follow lists? and get updates sent to your profile when a list as been updated?

    Would it be a good idea to put a book club section in here somewhere? It would be cool to list highly recommended books on vocabulary building, communication, etymology, linguistics, semantics etc.

    April 20, 2010

  • Feature suggestion: put usage statistics in the definition. let us know how often each definition is used. E.g. definition 1 is used 20% of the time, definition 2 is used 80% of the time with this particular word.

    Also, this word is used incorrectly 30% of the time.

    April 20, 2010

  • Examples always show up first when a definition is not available. As you've seen, for some uncommon words definitions aren't available yet. Be patient, wordnik is the dictionary of the future

    April 6, 2010

  • Cool, thanks for the update. Also, will it ever be possible to look up a word(s) based on the definition? I guess that would be similar to synonyms

    April 6, 2010

  • I noticed on the bottom of the wordnik site it appears you can view words alphabetically, however it's ordered based on occurrences, not the alphabet. When can we view words alphabetically like an old fashioned dictionary?????

    April 5, 2010