Word: imperfectibility
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...without benefit of electricity. Once he gets the contraption running, he starts hauling chunks of frozen water to neighboring villages, trying to impress the natives with a tangible example of progress in the tropics. He is messianic about his ice: "It's the beginning of perfection in an imperfect world. It makes sense of work. It's free. It's even pretty. It's civilization." Unfortunately, the machine that churns it out depends on what Allie calls "poison," a highly volatile mixture of hydrogen and enriched ammonia. It is an accident waiting to happen...
Saul Bellow falters somewhat in The Dean's December. It will not stand as his best book, probably not even one of his best three of four. It is, nonetheless, reassuring in a strange way that the shortcomings of the work are due to experimentation and imperfect exploration and not to any diminution of the genius which made him one of the country's finest writers...
Busing plainly has proven an imperfect answer to much school segregation. Particularly in the Northern cities in which it became widespread in the mid-1970s, its impact has been mixed, and is has frequently stirred up new racial tensions. But in some cities--particularly those of the Deep South, where it helped break up century-old segregation--it has had impressive effects...
...labor market is imperfect. When there is a considerable increase in unemployment, do wages drop as they would in a competitive market? History answers...
...just another humanist crying out against the inroads of technology. He knows science well enough to be playful about it. He understands that the weakest link in any theory may be the theoretician. His message is not glum but comic: if a perfect machine ever arose, miraculously, from its imperfect builder, no one would trust...