Word: expertly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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These are the worst winter storms to hit California in a decade, or 500 years or 1,000, depending upon which expert is quoted. Los Angeles, used to downpours of no more than three-quarters of an inch this time of year, was drenched with 8 in. before clouds let up; bursting drainage systems shot manhole covers skyward like missiles. Whole towns were isolated. One, Guerneville, 65 miles north of San Francisco, was closed to nonresidents as the Russian River rose toward the rooftops, and 465 citizens were airlifted to higher ground. A rural community called Rio Linda, a satellite...
...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 this 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 he has not the vaguest idea of what Hume really said, or in fact what he said it in, or in fact if he ever said anything. But by never bothering to define empiricism, he may write indefinitely on the issue, virtually...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...this point our assumption expert proceeds to discuss anything which strikes his fancy at the moment. If he can sneak the first assumption past the grader, then the rest is clear sailing. If he fails, he still gets a fair amount of credit for his irrelevant but fact-filled discussion of scientific progress in the 18th century. And it is amazing what some graders will swallow in the name of intellectual freedom...
...have not come such a long way. Like the word penis (before one was cut off), bitch (before the Speaker's mother used it) seldom found its way onto the nightly news. It was too sexual, too nasty to invoke outside gangsta rap and the barracks. "Remember," says language expert and New York Times columnist William Safire, "it's so offensive that Barbara Bush didn't use it but said that what Geraldine Ferraro was 'rhymes with rich.' " Defined by Webster as "the female of the dog, a lewd or immoral woman," it is uttered -- but usually only in private...