Word: babeling
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...between "Jane (whom I adore)" and "Jane, whom I adore," and the difference between them both and "Jane -- whom I adore -- " marks all the distance between ecstasy and heartache. "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put at just the right place," in Isaac Babel's lovely words; a comma can let us hear a voice break, or a heart. Punctuation, in fact, is a labor of love. Which brings us back, in a way, to gods...
...uncertainty. Besides, the feverish riddles of Ezekiel and the prophetic agonies of Job make better copy than the Tractatus of Spinoza. Johnson singles out the 17th century philosopher as the sort of non-Jewish Jew who sacrifices the soul of rationalism to cold logic. He quotes Soviet Writer Isaac Babel's self-mocking definition of a Jewish intellectual ("a man with spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart") and brands Marx and Freud pseudo scientists...
...efforts to explain and justify the secret U.S. sales of weapons and spare parts to Iran -- which shattered the entire foundation of the Administration's fervent public efforts to take a strong stand against terrorism -- Reagan and his aides last week seemed only to be erecting a Tower of Babel abuzz with conflicting and contradictory voices. Presidential confidants past and present got into a public squabble: former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, one of the architects of the President's Iranian policy, called the arms transfers a "mistake," and was promptly accused by Chief of Staff Donald Regan of giving...
From the moment I punch in or step into a warehouse, I feel as if I have entered the Tower of Babel: nothing makes sense. For instance, when my foreman tells me to "cut the grass down thar between that patch of goober weeds and them stink weeds," I am at a complete loss...
Were Harvard to abandon its restraint and raise its voice on behalf of a compelling cause, it would have toppled an ivory tower only to replace it with a no less ignominious Tower of Babel...