Word: imperfection
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...bows to Bush on Wednesday can set both men off on the right foot. He can nod ruefully at the machinery of our election and praise the resiliency of our democracy (and the wisdom of its high court), making special mention of the American ability to embrace the imperfect. A blessing for both these guys. And how Bush receives it will be everything for his first 100 days. Admitting there were vexing problems with his victory - and promising to try vigorously to fix them for next time - is a good preamble to any talk about mending the tone...
...ideal (count every vote, impartially) had a head-on collision with the imperfect (the machines stink, the recount standards varied wildly, and there wasn't time anyway...
...made his reputation not by showboating on Geraldo but by reducing complex litigation to understandable stories, which he tells in his flat Midwestern tone. Boies likes the concrete. On Friday he introduced a developer of the Votamatic machine, William Rouverol, 83, to explain how his imperfect machine is more likely to produce dimpled chads in the vote for President than for other offices, because that column gets clogged by getting the most use and therefore harder to punch out cleanly as the day goes on. Boies took special delight in his statistician, a Yale professor resembling Professor Irwin Corey...
...pace of invention continues at the rate suggested by the preceding pages, the world will become a really boring place. The human species needs its daily grapplings with the illogical, the clunky, the imperfect if it is to preserve that which separates us from animals and household appliances. Man likes doing some things the hard way, the wrong way, the old-fashioned way. And too often, an invention that solves one superficial problem creates profound new others. Four new inventions in particular must be blocked at all costs if humanity as we know it is to survive...
...Ahmann was stuck now defending an imperfect machine, whose potential problems suddenly took center stage. After a few direct questions from Judge Sauls, Ahmann even acknowledged a particularly damning flaw: That a small light could show through on a ballot and the machine might not register a vote...