Arcane designs and clever agitprop, Red Sox fomentation, hearts with initials and humbling compliments.
The arcane designs and driftings of metaphor -- what James called the figure in the carpet, what Keats called negative capability, what Kafka called explaining the inexplicable -- are what the novel knows.
Emerging in the mid-1990s, the relational artists favored a more carefree approach that featured ephemeral situations, functional objects (often involving seating), architectural follies, amusing signage, elegant or arcane graphic design, performances, freebies (including food) and loosely planned group events.
And so watches are retracting into an arcane culture designed to exclude the uninitiated.
Called "Contracts of Carriage," the legal agreements airlines make with their passengers are involved, arcane and designed to limit corporate liability.
India's alcohol market is governed by arcane rules designed to encourage local production and discourage consumption, so distillers and brewers here never had to worry excessively about quality.
That kind of cross-pollination is reminiscent of the way Wall Street, starting in the 1990s, hired astrophysicists and theoretical mathematicians to design arcane financial products.
An artful reworking of Conan Doyle, with Sherlock Holmes transplanted to 14th-century Italy, the book's baggage of arcane erudition was designed to flatter the average reader's intelligence.
By now, Mr. Kline had come to suspect that the scoring drop could be traced to an arcane area of test design called equating.
Twenty years ago, it would have been all but impossible on the left or the right for so many of these like-minded activists find one another in such a short space of time; their best potential convener would have been the local party, with its entrenched leadership and arcane rules that seem designed to drive away newcomers.
