Word: wisdoms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wartime. The President's proposal appeals to the heart: he is calling for a defense system that renders strategic missiles ineffective. It also appeals to common sense: his plan seems to open up pleasing vistas for arms reduction. But layman's logic often conflicts with the accepted wisdom of experts, whose chorus we now hear. In developing nuclear weapons, Roosevelt moved in secret, sidestepping doubters. (His own naval aide, Admiral William Leahy, said F.D.R.'s project was "the biggest fool thing we've ever done. The atomic bomb will never go off, and I speak...
...defensive devices he envisions have a reasonable chance of working. Enough scientists accept the theory to make it worth pursuing. Besides, visions of this scope are not necessarily the province of the technical experts. After World War II, one of America's top scientists, Vannevar Bush, delivered this wisdom for the ages: "There need be little fear of an intercontinental missile in the form of a pilotless aircraft." And many of the instant critics of Reagan's idea, like former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, were not all that prescient when conducting the public's business...
During the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), however, the Soviets accepted sharp restrictions on ABMs. They were moved to do so not just by the philosophical wisdom of the American argument, but by the strength of the American bargaining position. The U.S. had started to build an ABM of its own, despite stiff political opposition, so the Soviets had to ponder the implication of unregulated competition as an alternative to negotiated restraint. They also realized the apparent impossibility of an effective ABM. The 1972 SALT I treaty limiting ABMs is the only nuclear arms control agreement still legally...
Whyte, 65, has long been concerned with the real life of cities as opposed to the conventional urban wisdom of planners and architects. A former Fortune editor, he belongs to a small band of journalists who have alerted laymen to the folly of the two extreme approaches to the hearts of our cities: neglect and cataclysmic "renewal." Among Whyte's allies are Grady Clay, formerly of the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, now editor of Landscape Architecture magazine, and Jane Jacobs, who is teaching at Toronto. In the 1958 anthology The Exploding Metropolis, Jacobs wrote, "The point. . . is to work...
Bruce Beresford, the Australian director making his American film debut, is no subtle stylist. His tendency is to run like hell with a single visual strategy: flossy soft focus in The Getting of Wisdom, low-angled shots for the heroes and villains of Breaker Morant, hyperactive camerabatics to catch the footballers in The Club, and, to emphasize the lonely helplessness of Mac and his kind, a series of longshot landscapes that dwarf the actors. But with his jeweler's eye for casting and a fond patience with his actors, he allows every performance in Tender Mercies to shine through...