Word: flaw
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Occasionally John succumbs to a flaw Lem's other protagonists do not: his witty cynicism turns to bromides and offending overstatement, as in the remark "despite the exhaust fumes, I could make out the scent of flowers in the gently fluttering breeze." For this we have Lem to blame: in his eagerness to emphasize the irony behind scientific progress that has backfired, he commits the sin of self-indulgence...
...sequence that stopped just short of disaster exposed a number of weaknesses in the safeguard system, including the obvious flaw of not having a remote-control method of adjusting a stuck valve. But human fallibility apparently was the more alarming shortcoming of what happened at Three Mile Island. Once the original on-site mistakes had been made, the blame spread to the NRC itself. Commission officials privately admit that they were slow to get an emergency crew with the necessary skill and authority to the scene of the disaster. Had the right men been there at the right time, three...
...unblinking self-examination provide the basis for a muted, moral judgment on life as it was lived along the San Andreas Fault in the good old days of Watergate. If Paul's relationship with Emily, the ventriloquist lady, remains a trifle too enigmatic, that does not fatally flaw a novel of wit, sensibility, and a delicate honesty about the ways (notably sexual) in which distant stations send and receive signals across the modern wasteland...
...from a prolonged dose of conflicting instructions, as, say, when a mother tells a child not to eat sweets, yet is constantly rewarding it with candy. But studies of identical twins and adopted children by Biochemist Seymour Kety strongly suggest a genetic base for schizophrenia. According to Kety, the flaw, contained in the cells' DNA, the master genetic molecules, may possibly be transmitted by viruses. In any case, the new pharmacological researchers no longer regard schizophrenia as a single ailment but, like cancer, as a collection of different malfunctions. In schizophrenia, the common denominator is the brain, and many scientists...
...other flaw comes from ommission. Apparently, the New South as seen by Ritt really doesn't have any racial problems. Throughout the first three-quarters of the film, blacks and whites co-mingle with utter amiability. But when the plot thickens and a smattering of biolence is called forth, out pops "racial tension." Ritt uses the issue mechanically and it shows...