Word: discern
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...thrash metal. Rose and Caram Costanzo produced the album, apparently doing little more than turning up the volume on every track. “Chinese Democracy” is so loud it makes Slipknot sound sedate. Even for the masochistic soul who would endure volume levels high enough to discern any musical detail, the payoff is only in the pain. If democracy does come to China, I hope the revolution isn’t so gruesome a spectacle. Played with the volume down, though, this album would make great elevator music. The undifferentiated wash of recycled rock tropes...
...Italy vary. Some say the man known as Il Cavaliere sees the world as his personal stage, simply letting it all hang out in public like other super-rich and powerful people do in private, convinced that his humor and Italian charm will win over the world. Others discern a calculation in his off-the-cuff quips: to divide his opponents, to keep allied pretenders to his throne off balance, and most of all to simply keep the spotlight on himself. By now, having been elected Prime Minister three times, most see his occasional outrageousness as an integral part...
...possible, in this rotisserie of naked self-promotion, to discern some larger themes. For the first time since Franklin Roosevelt, the next President will face the prospect of neither peace nor prosperity - and there seems a consensus that, as much as Obama (or John McCain, for that matter) wants to play in the world, the financial crisis will demand most of his time and political capital. From that assumption flows another. For the sake of continuity and the absence of drama, it might not be a bad idea for Obama - if elected - to stick with the current national-security players...
...radio play itself became a textbook example of mass hysteria: in 1940, Princeton psychologist Hadley Cantril used an analysis of listeners' reactions to posit that social panics occur when large groups can't discern reliable sources of advice from unreliable ones. That said, there's little chance that a media hoax of this magnitude could happen again. We've grown too sophisticated, too cynical to believe that little green men from Mars with big silver spaceships will land in New Jersey, of all places. We're too smart, for example, to be fooled by telephone calls suggesting that John McCain...
...wait so long to honor this important research? Because right now the world needs it, and Harvard is ready—whether we know it or not. Since the awards didn’t offer a hard answer, FM hit the streets with a survey of our own to discern whether Harvard students have more faith in the Ig or the Nobel...