Too healthy: her skin was entirely ungrey, her nose sharp and whole.

He was an extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and had the manners of a farmer.

tensings of the muscles

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.