Word: assets
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Percy's ignorance, mitigated only by a spotty familiarity with a wide range of writing on language, is no asset. The meat of his hinted-at theory is a rediscovery of Charles Peirce's linguistic philosophy. Percy says Peirce has been completely overlooked by modern linguists. His ignorance of the literature hurts him here--Henning Andersen, for one, has used a Peircean model of language acquisition in his work in generative phonology--and it hurts him everywhere he tries to argue on the linguists own turf. Percy adopts the jargon of the professionals and scholars without the sense, and ultimately...
...seen fit to honor International Women's Year with a lengthy cover story about "The New Beauties," [June 16] a group of young women whose only discernible asset is a pretty face. Now how about giving equal space to "The New Handsomes," about the equally vapid, pea-brained, nonsense-spouting but gorgeous young men of the world? I can hardly wait...
...means of registering protests, much as American voters do in primaries. Europeans were more sanguine than the U.S. about the respectability and acceptability of Italian Communists. Some British politicians even suggested that a Tito-style Communist Party in Italy would be more of an embarrassment than an asset to the Kremlin...
...King's greatest asset is a flair for thinking-and acting-big. With Ali demanding prize money beyond the means of individuals or even corporations, King has made his deals with governments. Shrewd enough to realize that championship bouts featuring Ali are the kind of promotion that developing nations like to stage, King has courted heads of state in Cairo, Tehran, Lusaka (Zambia), Manila and Kuala Lumpur. "The jet lag is so bad," he says, "I eat breakfast 24 hours...
...taste seems to enter here, as well as bad literary judgment. The literary problem is that since Arafat is in fact not dead and the plot is not cast in the future, the reader knows that the assassination must fail. Frederick Forsyth managed to turn this liability into an asset in The Day of the Jackal. Black fails to do so, and the book's only suspense is in learning what form failure will take...