Word: skittishly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...trivia like junk mail and vacuum cleaners. And how contrite is the curmudgeonly commentator? "I'm furious about the race issue," he says. "As for homosexual insensitivity, I suspect I'm guilty." His reinstatement proved at least two things. Insensitivity to homosexuals is a pardonable offense, even at the skittish networks. And TV executives should think twice before tangling with a star...
While his rhetoric was forceful, Mandela signaled that he was a magnanimous and reasonable man with whom the government could talk. He went out of his way to make conciliatory gestures toward the skittish white community, asserting, "Whites are fellow South Africans, and we want them to feel safe." In Soweto he called unequivocally for "one person, one vote." But when asked whether the A.N.C. might be willing to ease that demand, he responded, "Compromises must be made in respect to every issue." Earlier, speaking directly to white fears and concerns, Mandela noted, "They insist on structural guarantees to ensure...
...reduce runaway system errors by a kind of "paranoid democracy," where modules working in parallel constantly evaluate whether their electronic co- workers are "sane" or "crazy." Unfortunately, as last week's breakdown showed, it is possible for all the modules to go crazy at once. Software, always the skittish part of any system, can also be made more dependable by imposing the kind of discipline on programmers that engineering standards impose on, say, bridge designers. A program like AT&T's faulty switching system, however, which can contain a million lines of code, is more complex than any bridge. "Standards...