Word: dismalness
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Leave it to television to figure out how to give the dismal science some Hollywood glitter. Free to Choose, Nobel-prizewinning Economist Milton Friedman's current ten-part series on the Public Broadcasting Service, has turned economics into an eye-filling travelogue. As the sun slowly sets on beautiful Hong Kong harbor, the shirt-sleeved Friedman credits the crown colony's prosperity to the absence of government controls on business. In gaudy Las Vegas, Friedman expounds on the workings of the market system while standing next to a working roulette wheel. Later, thundering Niagara Falls represents Canada, where...
...with fresh snow, but with broken glass. The fenced-in project looks more like post-war Dresden. The hollow buildings and junkyard streets appear uninhabitable. Many of the apartments are occupied by squatters who arrive at night and stake out empty rooms. Periodic drug raids shake up the dismal day-to-day activities at Fidelis...
...thus an ominous warning that the resistance could develop into a general uprising throughout the country. Moreover, the civilian protests accompanied other intelligence reports that Karmal's dissension-racked puppet regime was on the verge of collapse. Overall, the Soviets appeared to be up against a dismal strategic reality: to suppress both the insurgency and civil disobedience, they might have to remain in the country far longer than they had perhaps intended, and they could be forced to bring in as many as 50,000 more troops to retain control of the cities and highways...
Martin Davies, as Edgar, often manages to escape Sellars' designs. His sweet British accent gives Shakespeare's poetry its proper melody. And his transformation from Eton dupe to London punk adds a clever twist to Sellars' dismal view of modern civilization...
...competitive streak nowhere appears in any of the accounts of his White House days," the authors write. This about the man who said he would whip his opponent's ass. And "crisis thinking," the authors tell us, "runs counter to Carter's instincts." A terrific politician, perhaps--but a dismal leader...