Word: polisher
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...really one Jewish nation but an uncertain amalgam of Ashkenazic (European) and Sephardic (Oriental) Jews. The Sephardim (literally "Spaniards," though most are from North Africa or Asia) represent almost 65% of the Jewish population. The generally better-educated Ashkenazim ("Germans," in Old Hebrew), many of them descendants of the Polish and Russian Jews who founded Israel, rule the country. The Sephardim feel discriminated against because of their cultural shortcomings. Only 3% of all top government officials and 20% of the Knesset, or Parliament, are Sephardim. In the 18-man Cabinet, only Iraqi-born Police Minister Shlomo Hillel is from...
...appreciate the damage that this sort of sloppiness can do, it is useful to invoke the late Count Alfred Korzybski, inventor of general semantics. Korzybski was a Polish-born mathematician and physicist, part crank and part genius, who regarded his theory as a whole new science of life. Our language, argued Korzybski, does not reflect reality, and its structure does not correspond to the seen or unseen world. Its grammar, based on Aristotelian logic, implies primitive philosophical concepts tied to the prescientific past. All this leads to emotional disturbances and frustrations, known as semantic shock. Korzybski prescribed some mental tricks...
...strength. There is newness still about him, an abiding belief in the goodness of people that continues to rise to the surface, and even his temper emerges as a very special righteous indignation, a rare quality in the gray of Washington's current power holders. Ed Muskie, the Polish immigrant tailor's son, is a true believer. That scarecrow frame, craggy face and gravelly voice make everybody think of Abraham Lincoln, and that is of huge appeal in this aimless age. But occasionally, there is the disquieting sensation that somehow he is trying too hard to be "Honest...
...problem. The silting normally caused by the propellers of passing ships has been considerably slowed, since hardly anything has moved on the canal in nearly four years. The 14 vessels trapped in Great Bitter Lake when the shooting started-four of them British, two Swedish, two West German, two Polish, one American, one French, one Bulgarian and one Czechoslovak-are still there. So is the American freighter Observer, isolated farther upstream. The British ships were abandoned last year after London underwriters paid out a total of $24 million in claims. The skeleton crews who remain aboard the other trapped ships...
...totally did Kosinski keep his private self apart from his social roles that he became his own most interesting fictional creation. As a political science student (1955-57) at the Communist-controlled Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, he led several lives. On the surface, he was a brilliant student of socialist theory who rose rapidly to an associate professorship. Within, he plotted his escape from the controls that threatened his individuality. A confident master of bureaucratic judo, Kosinski eventually used the weight of official structure against itself. He invented four fictitious professors to use as references-each with...