Word: explain
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...Ockham, the prolific English philosopher most famous for one big hit: the eponymous Ockham's razor. A champion of simplicity, Ockham made it his mission to argue that things should never be made more complicated than they have to be. If there are a lot of ways to explain a phenomenon, slice your answer as finely...
Pundits make similar mistakes when they're trying to explain non-presidential elections. Why do voters ticket-split, choosing a President from one party and a Representative or Senator from another? Perhaps it's a clever way to preserve the creative tension of divided government, check the excesses of any one party and send a veiled warning to everyone in Washington that it's time for a little bipartisanship. Or perhaps people simply choose the candidates they like. Campaign managers overthink things too. Consider the time wasted in war rooms parsing the molecular difference between, say, "Ready for Change...
...Once, in a tiny eatery on Roat?n Island, Honduras, the young boy who came out to take my order was wearing a T-shirt from my hometown - a purple Wellesley softball shirt that looked identical to the one my family had recently donated to charity. Excitedly, I tried to explain to him in broken Spanish that he was wearing my sister's shirt, which he interpreted as an accusation that he had stolen it. The boy profusely denied my allegations, and when he reappeared with my fried chicken, he was wearing a different shirt to deter any further conversation...
...many times, these quick fixes fail; the inflated egos can't fit into the same arena. Those Rockets lost in the first round of the playoffs. The Yankees haven't won a World Series in seven years. So how do you explain the 2008 Boston Celtics? Last season, the Cs, one of the most celebrated sport franchises, winners of 16 titles, were the joke of the NBA. They finished 24-58 and at one point doormatted 18 straight games. During the off-season, Celtics GM Danny Ainge pulled off a pair of heists, bringing Kevin Garnett...
...Vicente Celis, 42, who moved here from Mexico in 2003, shows off the digital slide show he's developing, An Inconvenient Truth--style, to explain La Entrada to other residents. He makes reference to the documentary's swimming-frog example of global warming--the frog that doesn't realize it's boiling because the water temperature increases so slowly. "The same thing is going to happen to us," says Celis. "But [we] don't have to let people boil...