Word: astin
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Virtual unknown Sean Astin gives a persuasive performance as the scrappy young man who succeeds only because of his intense desire and determination. Stilted and cliched dialogue makes his task especially difficult. An example of the pathetic genericism of most of the script is the most emotional line he utters during the movie, in which he tells his girlfriend that he has to pursue his dream: "If I don't go now, I won't be any good to you, or to me, or to anybody." Sniff...
...Lots of people will use the world yente, which we hate here," says Annette Ashin, the vice-president. The Yiddish word has nagging connotations, says Astin. "It's not a flattering word...
...previous decade. The lesson they have taken to heart: education is a means to an end, the ticket to a cherished middle-class life- style. "The saddest thing of all is that they don't have the quest to understand things, to understand themselves," says Alexander Astin, whose UCLA-based Higher Education Research Institute has been measuring changing attitudes among college freshman for 24 years...
Alexander W. Astin of the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute is not worried. Astin feels that we need to emphasize the humanities more, so that we can tackle problems like world peace, poverty and bigotry. As he recently wrote in Science, "Our understanding of the physical universe has increased exponentially, while our understanding of the behavior of human beings and of societies has lagged far behind...
...Astin is correct--since Plato's time we have not made quantum leaps in our understanding of human behavior. However this is not because of a national de-emphasis or misplaced priorities, but because human behavior may never be "understood" as the natural sciences...