Word: clever
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Spark once wrote, half whimsically, that in the Book of Job "there are points of characterization and philosophy on which I think I could improve." Her alterations chiefly consist of attempts at clever explication. Job's suffering "became a habit," theorizes Harvey. "He not only argued the problem of suffering, he suffered the problem of argument. And that is incurable." As for the comforters, at least they "kept him company. And they took turns as analyst. Job was like the patient on the couch." But, Harvey concludes, the Book of Job teaches us "the futility of friendship in times...
...Producer Sir Alexander Korda. Articulate, aggressive and imperturbably assured, he makes so little secret of his ambition for recognition that friends consider it part of his Hungarian charm. Among his own bestsellers is Power! How to Get It, How to Use It, a book neither as trashy nor as clever as it sounds. Hype is Korda's natural gift ("My argument is with people who do not view the world cynically," he once said). He published an "as told to" book by an aging mobster, Joseph Bonanno. Critics complained that it romanticized the Mafia and objected to its title...
...turns clever, dominating, quick-tempered and stubborn, British Industrialist Sir James Goldsmith, 51, rarely fails to excite speculation over his next takeover target. Last week the balding, staccato-voiced conglomerateur offered Continental Group, a company that had 1983 revenues of $5 billion from products that range from tin cans to life insurance, $50 a share for its stock, or $2.1 billion in cash. Said he: "It is a very good company. We admire the management...
...defense against being insulated by new information and folled by memory losses is to establish methods of coping. Cognitive psychologists have formalized these processes a bit. Jerry Bruner, in an essay entitled "Going Beyond the Information Given," illustrates one aspect of the phenomenon with a clever example using a string of numbers: 58121519222629. It doesn't take long to memorize the series if one recognizes that the numbers can be grouped 5-8-12-15-19-22-26-29: i.e., and that the series begins with 5, and that successive numbers are the result of adding...
William G. Perry Jr., professor of education emeritus, wrote a very clever essay defining types of examsmanship. A student who has just received an "A" on an exam objects. "But sir, I really don't deserve it, it was mostly bull, really." To this kind of remark, there is only one possible rejoinder. Alfred North Whitehead's: "Yes sir, what you wrote is utter nonsense, utter nonsense! But ah! Sir! It's the right kind of nonsense...