Word: flaws
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...painful politeness and unwavering loyalty to Ronald Reagan through mountainous deficits and Iran-contra bumbling raised the question of his backbone. He waffled on issues like abortion and taxes, and even his supporters wondered in dark moments about his inner stuff. What this may suggest is one more flaw in our system of political assessment. In our dizzy campaigns we analyze a candidate too much from a few one-liners lofted by adversaries or twits. In the debate over terribly complex domestic issues, we frequently heap scorn on even marginally open minds that waver...
Rushdie uses original, surprising and often quirky language to tell this story. And he does not present the moral in a heavy-handed manner. Haroun's only flaw is the shallowness of its characters, who while amusing have no developed personalities...
...atmosphere of this first one-act is depressing, and its moody manner alienated many of the small children in attendance. This is not of itself a flaw--the murky moral conflict and mediocre acting hurt this production more than the play's tone does. Only Lithgow, as the black-clad, cigarette-smoking Death, brings vigor to his character, but his grave voice fits the part more exactly than his mannerisms...
There was more than enough time to catch the telescope's flaw. Rough grinding of the mirror began in 1978, final polishing was not finished until 1981, and the completed telescope sat on the ground for four years after the space shuttle program was disrupted by the Challenger explosion. The mirror's manufacturer, Connecticut-based Perkin-Elmer Corp.,* told NASA that the standards of precision established for the mirror were not only met but exceeded. The only problem was that the mirror had been painstakingly polished into the wrong shape...
What was worse, the company's reliance on this system was absolute. Though backup analyses pointed to a major flaw in the mirror, stated the report, these "indicators of error were discounted at the time as being themselves flawed." The evidence of the problem was never analyzed in detail by the engineers and scientists most qualified to do so. NASA accepted Perkin-Elmer's decision to rely solely on the precision of the template, when instead the space agency should have been alert "to the fragility of the process and the possibility of gross error...