"If you think about the last half-century, interracial marriage has evolved from being illegal in many states, to merely a taboo, to merely unusual, and with each passing year, it becomes less unusual," said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center.
Day by day, the formerly unthinkable becomes merely unusual, then debatable, then routine.
So was it merely the unusual nature of Wimbledon -- the only significant tournament played on grass -- that allowed the big-hitting teenagers to burst briefly to the fore?
Whatever intellectual ability Madeleine possessed, it certainly never prompts Herzog to declare that his equal is here; it was merely an unusual and titillating adjunct to her youth, beauty, and intoxicating (to Herzog) sexual inaccessibility.
Enescu describes its impact as "amazing", since Péladan was merely an "unusual [funambulesc in the original] representative of French culture".
A trivial potential answer is that nitrergic inhibition of C-PR and B31/B32 is merely an unusual mechanism for generating the resting potential, a general property of all cells.
The Venezuelan government's inability to sustain an effective public housing program led, in the last decade of Chavez's life, to numerous land and building "invasions," and the Tower was merely the most unusual, or spectacular, of them.
Reviewing the recital in The New York Times, Ross Parmenter praised Mr. Puyana's "technical skill" and "wealth of poetic insights," adding, "He exploited the tonal possibilities of the instrument — from tiny bell-like sounds to deep, buzzing vibrations — without ever seeming to play merely for the unusual effects".
William J. Lynn of Philadelphia, the first senior official in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to be convicted of failing to prevent child sex abuse by priests under his supervision, asked on Thursday that he be spared prison, arguing that a lengthy sentence "would be merely cruel and unusual".
In Britain, I think this is merely a little unusual.
The paper's analysis does not prove that any widespread cheating occurred; it merely points to unusual test score swings.
