Word: backgrounders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first, I hated that the control buttons made it too easy to inadvertently page forward, backward or--if you hit the Back button--somewhere else entirely. I didn't like that it displayed black type on a gray background. (You can't beat black type on a white page.) The battery stank. When I'd put the Kindle in sleep mode and leave it for a few days, it was usually dead on my rearrival. Soon I consigned it to the Quittner Closet Where Old Gadgets...
...picture is multidimensional, all right, but not always visually persuasive. In a simple scene, say, where people talk in the foreground with shrubbery behind them, the background seems like a process shot even when it isn't; the two planes don't blend to form a plausible movie reality. The process works niftily, though, in a scene where Sean must get across a bottomless chasm by climbing from one suspended stepping stone to the next. Sometimes a gust of wind blows a stone upside down, and he must hang on, as shards of the rock break off and fall into...
...encampments, Catholic charities and pawnshops. It's no Bellagio. But he is a gentle man who treats his customers with respect, whether hoodlum or homeowner. He knows everything there is to know about weapons and is a stickler for the byzantine rules of gun ownership--the waiting periods, the background checks, the ATF callbacks and information requests...
...slave state, and fought in the Civil War, however briefly, on the Confederate side. His father occasionally owned a slave, and some members of his family owned many more. But Twain emerged as a man whose racial attitudes were not what one might expect from someone of his background. Again and again, in the postwar years, he seemed compelled to tackle the challenge of race...
...there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent assaults on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not. The shows were simply a form of entertainment popular all over the country in the 19th century, a part of the background against which he grew into his firm adult convictions...