As a result of these exercises, there is some background of what might be called "ritualized escalation" at work.

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Warm-ups are longer and more ritualized, with a sequence of volleys and serves.

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It's almost a meditation on the Batman phenomenon, and, by extension, on the ritualized institution of the summer action movie.

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The modern Olympics are a model example of what the historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have called invented traditions ritualized official or quasi-official events, often presented as revivals of ancient practices or in other ways designed to imply continuity with the distant past.

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Except for the title celebration itself a ritualized mob scene that gets weirder and funnier as it goes on, culminating in a mass invasion of the honeymoon suite this cross-cultural, cross-sexual comedy-drama, set in New York City, is just a wan getting-to-know-you fable for alternative families.

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Anyone who has actually done real psychotherapy, in which people really pour out their souls (in my 20s, I practiced psychiatry), knows how dangerous, delicate and often destructive such an exercise can be -- even in the privacy, confidentiality and highly ritualized setting of the doctor-patient relationship.

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They knew enough to understand how hard they could push without breaking things (the rate of return they demanded would soon ossify into a ritualized expectation of stable growth rates, a big enabler of the rise of a middle class that could basically withdraw from the risk frontier).

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Josep's knowledge of and reverence for wine is conveyed through a nearly monastic, meditative, ritualized presentation as you move with him through the different sections of the cellar, learning about the wines of Catalonia and Spain, as well as the imports he recommends and pairs specially for your meal.

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