Word: imperfect
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There is nothing wrong with competition, and its benefits are the same for undergraduate audiences whether imported or developed locally. While competition may be imperfect in the American economy, it generally works well within University walls, enriching Harvard's intellectual flavor. Furthermore, the University has no control over most of the students' competitors and cannot force Brattle Theatre, say, or the University Theatre to close down, even if it wished...
...they are caused by the balloon itself when it rises through a thin layer of warm air at a thousand feet or so (see diagram). As it rises, it punches a hole in the layer. Cold air flows in, forming a blob of denser air that acts as an imperfect lens. Observers on the ground see a small moving image of the balloon above. The same effect can be produced, says Menzel, by holding a strong spectacle lens at arm's length toward a light...
Bergengruen knows that the Sperones of this world are few indeed. But in lucid, formal, unhurried prose, he makes plain the everlasting need for decency and good faith among imperfect men. Perfect solutions for human problems, he once said, are possible only "in the presence of God; but that should . . . not prevent us from continually trying to find a solution within the limitations of our daily lives...
...spoken rudely of such sacrosanct characters as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ("It is time that [his] pedestal were dismounted") and Bertrand Russell ("He made a fool of himself"). He has spoken ill of children ("the most imperfect of all human beings") and dogs ("they are only brutes"). He has dared to say, several times and in public, that Darwin was wrong. He has committed the modern heresy of declaring that there are such permanent, absolute values as Truth and Justice. Like a Socratic traveling salesman, he has moved up & down the country, talking to the young and causing acute attacks...
Truman Capote's stage adaptation of his novel, The Grass Harp, is a curious fusion of poetic sensitivity and imperfect theatrical technique. Clearly, Mr. Capote was hampered at the outset by the limited number of ways in which one can write a play. He had a quixotic plot and a tragic theme to work with, and inexplicably be chose straight comedy for his dramatic medium. Regrettably his continual resort to stock comic artifices detracts greatly from the important thematic development of the play...