The O-Factor has a number of preoccupations, including the fact "Brokeback Mountain" has switched to silent running for the homestretch of the Oscar hunt.
But in some respects his report reiterates the military top brass's traditional preoccupations, including the urge to master new technologies such as nuclear energy (to power submarines, not make bombs) and create a domestic arms industry, and a mild paranoia about Amazonia.Brazil's army occupies an ambiguous place in national life.
His preoccupations include family, railways and the Indian subcontinent.
The truth, however, is that early Prynne is quarried from all too real and resistant material: frequent preoccupations include capitalism and commodification, scientific method and research, cultural archaeology, glaciation and the problem of waste (a recent pamphlet is titled Refuse Collection).
His preoccupations include, like Mr. Smithson, a focus on entropy as well as destruction and anarchy.
While the U.S. has the military objective of seeking a foothold for the fight against ISIS, Turkey has other preoccupations, including its concern about the possible emergence of another autonomous Kurdish stronghold on its border and the ongoing cost and management of an enormous refugee burden.
Preoccupations including comb-overs, stingy hosts, medical quacks, the poetry racket, the futility of cosmetics, consumptive heiresses and one-eyed women lend his books the ambience of a front-row seat at the Roman carnival.
That is partly because residents have other preoccupations, including poverty and tensions between black residents and the West Memphis Police Department.
The character, Lady Cora, has three worryingly unmarried daughters; a meddlesome and opinionated mother-in-law (Maggie Smith); and a host of preoccupations, including her husband's lack of a satisfactory male heir, an inconvenient corpse in the wrong bed and a houseful of servants with complicated personal lives.
Every presidential campaign crystallizes its candidate's personality, proclivities and preoccupations, including, four years ago, President Obama's "no drama" ethos and Senator John McCain's freewheeling "maverick" bid, which led to his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate.
