Word: legerdemain
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...soft-shoeing subtlety, Bush is still a long way from Clintonesque legerdemain. But as power drains from the White House and tough international issues remain insoluble, we can expect more frequently to see a shaded worldview from the man who once cherished his moral clarity...
...ghosts and, of course, Luna Lovegood. ("She's great, isn't she?" Ron says of Luna in Deathly Hallows. "Always good value.") But then again, this isn't a lyrical interlude, this is the grand finale. It calls for big battles and high body counts, force majeure and not legerdemain, and Rowling leaves no stops unpulled. It gives nothing away to say that a final showdown occurs, and if the final plot twist is eminently satisfying but not all that surprising, it's only because fans have already worked through all the possible endings on the Internet with such massive...
...evocations of popular songs. Idle's been writing this sort of ditty for decades. At Cambridge he did a song called "I Like Chinese" ("They only come up to your knees") that he reprised at the Hollywood Bowl. In his Flying Circus days he'd start with the verbal legerdemain of a highbrow-sounding verse ("Can a bee be said to be / Or not to be an entire bee / When half the bee is not a bee / Due to some ancient injury") with a simple chorus ("La di dah, one two three / Eric the half...
...Greene, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, published a study that peeled back the layers of statistical legerdemain. Poring over raw education data, he asked himself a basic question: What percentage of kids who start at a high school finish? The answers led Greene and subsequent researchers around the country to place the national graduation rate at anywhere from 64% to 71%. It's a rate that most researchers say has remained fairly static since the 1970s, despite increased attention on the plight of public schools and a vigorous educational-reform movement...
...technical legerdemain and vaulting athleticism, LOTR can't match K?, Cirque's Las Vegas martial-arts extravaganza. The Toronto show's battle scenes are pedestrian, and toward the end, a group of fierce warriors breaks into a heavy two-step, like clumsy backup singers in a doo-wop group. But this isn't an all-singing show, and it certainly isn't all dancing. It is a musical that becomes a spectacular morality play, an adventure with a soft and stricken heart...