Word: doorstop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Conduct Unbecoming has the heft and urgency of a journalistic milestone. But the book's lack of thoughtful underpinning, its failure to distinguish between homophobia and the military's more practical concerns, threatens to turn it into a doorstop...
...once the dust jacket gets it right: What It Takes "does for politicians what Tom Wolfe did for astronauts in The Right Stuff." Left unsaid -- and in this 1,047-page doorstop of an epic only the dust jacket is terse -- was precisely Wolfe's accomplishment in The Right Stuff. Wolfe took an event we all were certain we knew so well that it bored us to tears and convinced us that The Whole Thing Was a Lie. We had so internalized the public relations myths of the original Mercury astronauts that we had missed the real story...
...weight alone (3 lbs. 7 1/2 oz.) would seem the right heft for a doorstop and the wrong one for a best seller. But King has become a brand name himself, and his publishers ordered a supernatural first printing of 800,000 copies -- and then demanded five additional printings, for a current total of 1,025,000 copies. When an author receives that kind of recognition, two factors are at work: his skills and the vitality of his genre. King, who regards It as a "very badly constructed book," may be a little too hard on himself. But the frightful...
...instructions that tell computers what to do. And while the hardware is visible and tangible, the child knows that software is the soul of the machine. Without software, a computer is little more than a hunk of plastic and silicon that might as well be used as a doorstop. A computer without software is like a car without gasoline, a camera without film, a stereo without records. This year Americans will spend an estimated $65 billion on computers of all kinds. They will lay down an additional $16.2 billion for the software that makes the machines do their magic...
...specifically, it is CBS use of anecdotes that Reagan challenges he contends that the network's tales of families hardships unfairly hard others personal problems at his doorstop it's worth noting that this same chief executive several months ago rationalized his reduction in the food stamp program by citing the example of a man who spend his stamps on fruit and then spent the change on vodka. (Incidentally, such an event is impossible under federal food stamp practices...