Word: decentering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That's true. Candido and his pregnant 17-year-old wife, decent folk down on their luck, huddle in a makeshift camp in the canyon and climb out every morning to find work at a labor exchange. But the sight of hungry Mexicans spooks Kyra's clients, and she sees to it that the exchange is shut. Delaney's liberal beliefs crumble, and he votes with other residents to build a wall, with a gate, around their development. The author, mistrusting his skill and the reader's acuteness, relentlessly flashes irony alerts. Candido gets work constructing the wall, knowing well...
...said in Washington after the Japanese surrendered that the Soviets couldn't put an atom bomb in a suitcase because they didn't know how to make a suitcase. That was true only to a point: though they had yet to learn how to manufacture decent luggage, Soviet spies had given them a blueprint for the bomb...
...business partner branch out into insurance fraud. Soon the lizards are frisking: sleazy developers, mendacious salesmen, crooked building inspectors, clueless and boorish tourists. These sorry folk are what is called the fabric of society. Hiaasen's good guys are far out on the fabric's fringe: a decent chap who collects human skulls, and a huge, one-eyed wild man who lives in the swamps and eats roadkill. That this gent is a former Governor of Florida, an honest politician driven to distraction by greedsters, says all that is necessary about the author's view of government. Hiaasen's shabby...
...essential means of its spread and improvement, the National Endowment for the Humanities. It laments the depravity of network and cable TV, especially in the stew of commercial gunk it serves up to children, then wants to cut all federal funding for PBS, the only source of decent educational programming for children and of intelligent documentaries for grownups...
...keeping us from having to cope with the question," he added. "We'll figure out a way to make it fair. We've got help for the poorest and the elderly, but two people making 45 to 50 [thousand dollars per year] should still be able to rent a decent apartment...