Word: imperfectibility
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...relief crews, forced overtime and deferred (meaning neglected) maintenance have resulted in tired workers and worn equipment -- a deadly combination. There are further dangers in industries like oil and petrochemicals, where subcontracting has become a common money- saving move. Barely trained newcomers, many of them aliens with an imperfect grasp of English, are put at the controls of dangerous machinery, with predictable results. In Texas six major explosions at chemical plants and refineries have killed 47 workers in the past five years and injured 1,000 more. Subcontract employees were believed to have been at fault in two, the blasts...
Robinson is a demon for details, beginning with a movie's script. "A lot of companies start with an imperfect script, which is like drawing a road map while on a trip," he says. Other steps get just as much scrutiny, from choosing a director to arranging a sound track. "You don't know how good your movie will be, but you can avoid making a bad one," says Robinson. He tries to avoid the movie industry's all-consuming politics. "People don't go to the movies to see pitches and deals, they go to see good films...
Playing the devil's advocate is Father Andrew M. Greeley's favorite avocation. His novels continually irritate the church he serves, by revealing Vatican politics and presenting flawed priests. The narrator of An Occasion of Sin (Putnam; 352 pages; $19.95) puts forth the most imperfect of them all. The scurrilous, irritable Father Lar McAuliffe is assigned to test the claims of sainthood for his late detested colleague, John Cardinal McGlynn, martyred in Nicaragua. Father Lar rubs his hands in anticipation -- he knows all about the Cardinal's mistress, his alcoholism and his rumored misuse of church funds...
...foreign leaders are not at all ready to write off the world's largest democracy. "Indian democracy has weathered such blows before and can do so again," said a senior British diplomat. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to New Delhi during the Kennedy Administration, called the system "imperfect but secure." Said Galbraith: "The idea that the people of India would surrender their sovereignty to any form of dictatorship is not true. And I would feel sorry for anyone who tried to impose it on them...
...imperfect success of the propaganda campaign leaves Iraq with one big hope for a face-saving way out of the war: Soviet diplomacy. Moscow has not only gone along with the U.S. demand that Iraq get out of Kuwait completely and unconditionally but also helped draft the U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force if Saddam did not comply by Jan. 15. That, however, was when glasnost and democratization were in full flower, and Eduard Shevardnadze, a professed friend of the U.S., was Foreign Minister...