Word: scoff
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...Some scoff at Reagan's preachments and see him instead as a man who grew comfortable with the trappings of power. But his is a consistent theme: he speaks of being moved by a sense of duty rather than a sense of personal destiny. An old western movie sticks in his mind these days, Reagan says, an episode from a book by James Warner Bellah. The fort is under attack by Apaches; the colonel is dying; the young captain is standing by. The colonel-in the sort of role Reagan was always too fresh-faced to play-tells...
This technique is completely unpersuasive. Sociology--as Decter seems to realize when she says in a defense against those who would scoff at her lack of documentation, "This is the inevitable peril for anyone who seeks to discuss the world through the medium of his or her own senses"--requires some kind of evidence to support theories. True, Freud may not have had statistics, but at least his contributions were not descriptions of general social phenomena, and his work was based on personal exploration of his field. If no social theorists offered evidence to support their ideas, then the only...
THIS PROPOSAL is exactly the kind which generally cause supporters of Israel to scoff. The thought of turning over territory to an organization which has dedicated itself to murdering Israeli civilians, without first requiring that that organization formally recognize Israel's right to exist would seem dangerous folly. But Hoffmann is suggesting such a development only in the context of a general settlement. In short, if Syria and Egypt recognize Israel, if the United States and the Soviet Union are joint guarantors of Israel's security, the PLO refusal to extend Israel recognition becomes irrelevant. Palestinian spokesmen themselves have acknowledged...
...walls, filled with Nittany Lion stickers, Penn State schedules, art-deco posters of Paterno, autographed pictures of the local stars, speak for themselves. Soon, inevitably, the men watch as the provincial "punks" snicker, scoff and snort about whichever bowl Penn has "bullshat its way into this year," and about whichever regional favorite of theirs could "boot the Nits out of the Top Fifty." After allowing enough time for the rhetoric to billow up and fog the windows over completely, the men call, silently, for bet-backed talk or a little silence from the visitors. The bowl stakes, as well...
Jaromil indeed becomes a poet. He tries to spy on the maid as she takes her bath, and fails, but produces a vivid poem about his "aquatic love." The genius of lyric poetry, Kundera observes, "is the genius of inexperience ... We can scoff at the poet's lack of maturity, but there is something amazing about him too. His words sparkle with droplets that come from the heart, and that gives his verse the luster of beauty. These magic dewdrops need not be stimulated by real life events. On the contrary, we suspect that the poet sometimes squeezes...