To look for unexpected influences on voting habits, researchers recently compiled the individual county outcomes of presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial elections between 1964 and 2008 and compared them with local college football results during the same period.
In insisting on the point, General Musharraf, who has what Salman Haider, a former head of India's diplomatic service, calls "a horrible habit of unexpected candour", provoked a tetchy Indian reaction.
(She reminds me, in this respect, of a British science writer of my acquaintance, who will gladly offer a devastatingly exact account of the habits, plumage and unexpected quirks of the handsome game bird he is about, quite impeccably, to shoot).
Their performance at Preston's Harris Library last Sunday as part of the Frozen North Weekender, nestled amongst Dr Seuss display boards and a computer cluster, stays true to their habit of playing unexpected venues.
"I can never adapt myself," he complained to Carl Sandburg — who was one of Martha's many gentleman friends, and whose language in writing to her is one of this book's many unexpected treats — "to the usual habit of eating too much, drinking five varieties of wine and saying nothing, yet talking, for three long hours".
The abundance of the winter vrn-h3 allele in cultivated spring growth habit germplasm was unexpected since allelic variants at the VRN-H3 locus were previously reported only in exotic barley genotypes [ 17].
As he has noted, "uncommon methods prepare you for unexpected reactions... and because my habits are not typical, neither are my results".
The unexpected thing, given his life and habits and health, was not that he died so young but that he lived so long.
THE future has an annoying habit of arriving in unexpected ways.
The WCC has also made a habit of throwing up unexpected heroes from the Wigan front row.
