Word: cynic
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Buffalo Soldiers could play as a cynic's version of the current U.S. occupation of Iraq, except that its tone echoes that of Sgt. Bilko and Catch-22. Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is a wheeler-dealer stationed in Germany just before the sundering of the Berlin Wall. While his stoned fellow soldiers take a lethal joyride in a tankand the camp's defenestration rate is way too highElwood makes a pretty profit running guns, drugs and 1,000 cans of Mop & Glo to the locals. Then the plot kicks...
...told me that the school-voucher movement was Southern, white and conservative, even though it is predominantly Northern, urban and African American. He isn't above political opportunism of the basest sort - he has changed his position on free trade to suit Iowa's protectionist labor skates, and a cynic might argue that his position on Iraq was a clever response to a market void. But Dean is a master of the snappy formulation. He tells audiences, for example, that the President's tax cuts will "raise local property taxes and reduce services." This has the virtue of being accurate...
...entered Harvard the pessimistic cynic and leave this week little reformed. By sophomore year, I had acquired the nickname “anti-” since I frequently and immediately attacked my roommates’ ideas and would invariably take up a contrarian viewpoint in any conversation (one roommate even started to find amusement in proposing outlandish ideas just to see me get riled up). Garnering such an ugly nickname did make me self-conscious of my potential for unpleasantness and moderated my open cynicism, but it didn’t effect any radical shifts in my disposition...
...biggest impact, though, has come fairly recently. A good example is Wall Street earnings guidance, the issue on which Coke just got real. Some 95% of public companies still provide guidance. But in part because of Buffett's stand, the trickle of dissenters is growing. A cynic might note that this trickle consists mainly of companies that have struggled in recent years. Mickey D's, Ma Bell and Coke may simply be taking Mother's advice: If you can't say something nice, say nothing at all. But others are sure to fall in line. Buffett has long asserted that...
...easy to insist that he is driven by financial considerations above all else. Such an attitude, says actress Fiona-Jane Weston, who attended the protest at St. Paul's Church, is about "knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing" - Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic. But maybe Smith and the ENO board have a point. After all, this is not the first time the company has run into financial trouble. ENO received about €20 million this fiscal year from ace, which accounts for 53% of its funding. Box-office receipts account for 28% and corporate...