The discovery calls into question 50 years of assumptions that the author of Under Milk Wood and enduring poems on the holy innocence of childhood died from an alcoholic "insult to the brain" - the result of a binge in which, as he allegedly boasted, he drank "18 straight whiskies; I think it's a record".
But in Jefferson's stunning opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, he blew away thousands of years of assumptions about government -- the divine right of kings, citizens owing obedience to whatever government they lived under, adherence to tradition, rule by aristocracy.
For the detractors, truth is no longer dependent on proof because it's rooted in faith: faith that American exceptionalism was never truly meant to cover hyphenated Americans; faith in 400 years of cemented assumptions about the character and capacity of the American Negro; and faith that if the president doesn't hew to those assumptions then he must be alien by both birth and faith.
For hundreds of years, the assumption among doctors and midwives was that the life of a labouring woman in difficulty took priority over the foetus within.
I powered through my four years of college with the assumption that doing well and getting my bachelor's degree would be the key to having a future.
But in 1953, as in all previous known years of popular music, the assumption was that singers and listeners would mostly be grownups.
Most of the target population for the use of the PtDA were above 50 years of age and the assumption which was made for the study was that the majority of people in this age group prefer to use paper-based tools and are generally less familiar with using computers or the internet.
Even in that case, G.M. will still be able to add the $200 million to its pretax profit, because accounting rules require companies to include their start-of-year pension assumptions in their end-of-year financial results, even if the assumptions turn out to be wrong.
Kessler said: "On a personal level I do feel that over the years there has been a kind of assumption among the cognoscenti that Tintin is 'great art', while Asterix is 'just for kids'.
Even this forecast depends on heroic assumptions: years of good harvests, no worsening of security as NATO leaves, an open-ended Western commitment of $7 billion a year to pay for Afghanistan's police and army, and the successful exploitation of the country's vast but untapped mineral wealth.
