Word: flaws
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Readers of the current Scientific American are informed of several shattering discoveries. Among them: a fatal flaw in Einstein's special theory of relativity, a motor that runs on psychic energy, and a page from Leonardo Da Vinci's newly discovered notebooks, the Madrid Codices, which conclusively prove that the Renaissance man invented the flush toilet 500 years ago. Respondents who are bombarding the magazine with telephone inquiries and letters are being advised to take a second look at the article. It is sprinkled with names like Ms. Henrietta Birdbrain and Robert Ripoff-as befits an April Fools...
This is not necessarily a flaw. L'Avventura seemed initially to be about the search for a woman lost on an island. Then Antonioni -deliberately and to much controversy-abandoned this theme in favor of another, deeper one, a portrait of a whole inert society. In The Passenger, he lets go of the thriller elements midway and starts to concentrate on the growing relationship between Locke and a young tourist (Maria Schneider). But the change of focus does not deepen the picture as it did in L'Avventura. Instead, it diverts it while saying nothing new about Locke...
...early this month that it was inaccurate in, of all places, the ninth digit -still quite serviceable for run-of-the-mill computer wizardry, but not the very best the machine was fully capable of. Some infinitesimally remote calculation was slipping ever so slightly out of its grasp. The flaw is so minuscule a problem that most routine users probably would not discover it unless they were weighing electrons, and the Harvard computer is due to be corrected shortly. What, in plain language, is the matter? "I could explain the whole problem to you," said an assistant manager...
Harvey Swados finished Celebration shortly before dying of a brain hemorrhage three years ago at the age of 52. The novel has the virtues one cherished in Swados' fiction: decency, compassion and a gentle wit. Yet the book suffers from what was always Swados' noble flaw as a novelist: a talent never quite up to the demands he put upon...
Throughout, Hearts and Minds displays more than enough heart. It is mind that is missing. Perhaps the deepest flaw lies in the method: the Viet Nam War is too convoluted, too devious to be examined in a style of compilation without comment. And righteous indignation may tend to blind the documentary film maker to his prime task: the representation of life in all its fullness, not only those incidents that conform to his thesis. Peter Davis is the talented creator of much-prized TV documentaries (Hunger in America, The Selling of the Pentagon). But these were simpler projects...