Word: refract
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...After a dreamy sequence imagining Reagan practicing his swimming, Morris observes: "The swimmer enjoys a loneliness greater, yet oddly more comforting, than that of the long distance runner. One tunnels along in a shroud of silvery bubbles... Others may swim alongside for a while, but their individuality tends to refract away, through the bubbles and the blur. Often I have marveled at Reagan's cool, unhurried progress through crises of politics and personnel, and thought to myself, He sees the world as a swimmer sees it." It is an elegant way to describe the serene detachment that marked the public...
What gives the scandals political resonance here is the way they refract the shock that our own effort to stage-manage Russia's successful transformation might have failed. The expectation of quick and miraculous success was naive when applied to a country with a scant history of capitalism, no experience with democracy, and no tradition of the rule of law. Whatever Washington did was a crapshoot. Russians have always cheated the system to survive or thrive, first the Czars, then the Party, now the elected government. Men who were once at home in the old regime hold power...
Even American Jews were surprisingly mild in their response to a move many of them deeply mistrust. Most of them trust George Shultz as the best friend Israel ever had, and that seemed to help them see beyond natural fear to the glimmer of hope these events refract. In a rare divergence from the Israeli government line, the major umbrella organization of American Jews said it would not fight the Administration's decision. "Knowing this man," said Morris Abram, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, "I believe he would like to produce peace...
Spencer's sociology and cosmopolitan tastes are not obvious. Geography, class and manners are surfaces that refract the deeper feelings and emerging awarenesses of her characters. Some are confronted with familiar situations. The young woman in the title story learns the truth about her parents' marriage after her mother dies and her father's new wife tactfully but deliberately eliminates traces of her predecessor. The plot of The Skaters is complicated and, yes, Jamesian: a disinherited son is helped by his lawyer's wife, whose lover steals the original copy of the damaging will. Spencer is dispassionate about domestic morality...
...native New England boulders, arranged in a 60-foot circle, cage 70 spray jets which ordinarily "produce a fine spray which will refract natural light, producing a rainbow effect," according to a press release, issued last year when the construction of the fountain was announced...