Word: layman
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...never lets an interview become repetitive. He thinks faster and more subtly than most other television reporters, yet always does his homework and never seems to be using his wit just to score points. Well versed in the details and jargon of Washington, he nonetheless talks about ideas in layman's terms; he often says that one must not overestimate the audience's specific knowledge or underestimate its intelligence. His most difficult feat is avoiding the twin pitfalls of overaggressiveness and overfamiliarity. Says U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane Kirkpatrick: "He is tough enough to make it interesting...
...books on genes and DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid, the molecule which stores genetic information in the cell) have acted in the educational spirit of Al Vellucci. Both The Gene Age and DNA for Beginners are clearly written expositions which try to demystify molecular genetics for the layman; both, incidentally, include serious discussions of the Cambridge controversy over whether recombinant DNA research should be permitted...
After the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), American Catholics "walked away in droves from the sacrament of penance," says Russell Shaw, a layman who is public affairs secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference. Shaw speculates that some of the defectors are married couples who use birth control, and "they don't want to confess it, but they don't want to not confess it." More generally, though, the dwindling attendance at confession seems to suggest that lay Catholics have a diminishing sense of their own sinfulness and of the redemptive power of the sacrament. As Shaw puts...
What this reveals to the layman is that the Economic Dreamboat that the Administration chartered in 1980 is encountering rough waters, that may imply deeper rifts as the year goes on. Of course those waters have always been choppy. As early as fall 1981, David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, also spoke out about holes in the government's economic policy, saying the Administration was hard pressed to translate economic figures into economic reality. "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers," Stockman told Washington Post reporter Williams Greider in Greider...
...lambastes everyone connected with the legal profession, from starters to partners. For students worried about the bar exam, he has a chapter subtitled "Thousands of Morons Have Passed It-So Can You." There is a section exploring the compulsion for obscurity and obfuscation. The rule is: "If a layman can read a document from beginning to end without falling asleep, it needs work." Simple, direct statements should be avoided at all costs. For example, "The sky is blue" is impossibly straightforward; any associate worth his salt will quickly convert it to "The sky generally appears to be blue." His more...