Word: distinguish
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with me, which played a bizarre recording of what seemed like several dozen voices talking gibberish simultaneously. If I wanted to confer with my colleagues without being overheard by listening devices, we would gather around the babbler, speaking softly among ourselves. Theoretically anyone listening in would be unable to distinguish the real conversation from the cacophony of recorded voices. Whether it worked or not we could never be sure. The only certainty was that anyone trying to talk through the mind-numbing babble for any length of time would lose his own sanity. Thus we used it sparingly. Usually...
...estranged wife, is present at a variety show when a stand-up comedian literally turns into a live wire: a booby-trapped guitar electrocutes him when he grabs a microphone in the other hand. The hunt for the killer gives Brett a chance to do those set pieces that distinguish his books, notably one in which a domineering talk show host is reduced to helpless blithering by a deftly counterpunching old comic (who is an admirably wise and well-developed character) and another satirizing those ghastly award shows that blight English telly as depressingly as they...
...large part of the challenge is to distinguish between viable authoritarian regimes and ones that are doomed, especially among those the U.S. relies on to protect regional security. Where is the status quo best sustained, and where is it a lost cause? When should the U.S. stand by a client, despite his internal regime, and when should the U.S. begin to distance itself from him? In the context of statecraft, these questions are neither moralistic nor cynical. They are a matter of differentiating between those with whom the U.S. must live and those who will try to cling...
Third, it is wiser to support a regime in a country that has a system of succession assuring a measure of continuity than in a nation that does not. It is important to distinguish between institutionalized authoritarianism and autocracy. The latter by definition loses stability in the absence of the autocrat...
Cross-cultural testing can show widely different patterns in answering IQ questions, but no such differences show up between black and white children in the U.S., according to Jensen. Says he: "There is no way to discriminate or distinguish between the average ten-year-old black and the average 8½-year-old white. The tests look the same, but the black child has a lower mental age. It looks more like a developmental lag than a cultural difference...