Its decision to hit Syria was deliberately provocative, though whether it was wrong will depend on whether the bombed camp was indeed linked to the terrorist group behind the Haifa atrocity.
When an interviewer from the University of California at Riverside threw a provocative curveball asking whether nineteenth-century U.S. history can be considered its own field, or whether the Civil War created an unbreachable divide she set aside her panic long enough to craft a deft "yes and no" answer.
She was an acerbic and provocative conversationalist, whether talking about her views on politics or the latest actor.
A journalist and poet, Griswold trekked along a latitude line where two religions meet and often clash, and investigates a provocative issue — whether fundamentalism leads to violence — through individual lives in places like Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Full of provocative thought, whether you liked it or not, it did not deserve the predictable boos, let out like pre-prepared whoopee cushions, when Mitchell and her team took their bow.
Rene Claudel Mugenzi, a Rwandan human rights activist living in England, told me that in March 2011, Kagame was on a BBC radio show when Mugenzi called in and asked a provocative question — whether an Arab Spring-like revolution could erupt in Rwanda.
It's doubtful whether a reader who admired the disturbing ambiguities of Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life would find the simplistic melodrama of a 1970s Iron Man storyline "challenging and provocative", or whether a reader gobsmacked by The Arrival, Shaun Tan's sepia evocation of immigrant experience, would find Spider-Man: Clone Saga "astounding".
But unlike other issues on which the cardinal has recently taken provocative stands -- whether pro-choice Catholic politicians should receive communion, and women's role in society (he said women are naturals at "listening, welcoming and waiting") -- enlargement of the European Union is outside the church's purview.
The advent of highly sensitive methods for mutation detection raises a provocative question whether any mutation detected should preclude the use of cells in various in vitro applications and particularly in potential therapies.
Sexting is defined as the transmission of sexually provocative images, whether on a cellphone, the Internet, or other electronic media.
