Word: essay
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...might be accepted. It is rarely “accepted;” we aren’t here to accept or reject—we’re here to be amused. The more dazzling, personal, unorthodox, paradoxic your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations), the more interesting an essay is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course—and we all like to be called “assistants,” not “graders”—you may be able to ferret...
...discussion of the various methods whereby the crafty student attempts to show the grader that he knows a lot more than he actually does, the vague generality is the key device. A generality is a vague statement that means nothing by itself, but when placed in an essay on a specific subject very well might mean something to the grader. The true master of a generality is the man who can write a 10-page essay, which means nothing at all to him, and have it mean a great deal to anyone who reads it. The generality writer banks...
...take the typical example, “Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme.” The question is asked, “Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?” Our hero replies by opening his essay with, “David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If these be the spirit of the age in which he lived, then he was representative of it.” This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually...
...certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground." - in an essay about the use of torture, Washington Monthly, Jan/Feb/March...
...Neither Borrower nor Lender Be As a person interested in reality, I much appreciated Michael Kinsley's Essay on the government stimulus package [Dec. 15]. The media regularly say the "taxpayer has been hit again." I don't recall my taxes being affected. Rather, we have borrowed again, and not from fellow Americans - but from China, Japan and other countries. Have we come to the point that we may have more clout in the world militarily but others have more clout economically? I have read that what really brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression was World...