Word: comically
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Pedagogues seeking a "science of education" are sometimes mere comic pinpricks in a teacher's side. For example, Ph.D. theses have been written on such topics as Service in the High School Cafeteria, Student Posture and Public School Plumbing. But many studies are hard on teacher morale. Sociologist James S. Coleman's celebrated 1966 survey of pupil achievement seemed glum news for teachers. That study argued that family background made almost all the difference, and that qualities of schools and teachers, good and bad, accounted "for only a small fraction of differences in pupil achievement." Later researchers, examining...
...movie star will be projected this fall as an "adaptable, flexible Chief Executive," and "something of an intellectual." It's no longer what the candidate thinks or says that counts; it's how he's projected and perceived. No wonder McGrory believes that the comic strip Doonesbury has captured better than old-fashioned reporting "the essential nuttiness of this year's campaign...
...arguments are familiar; this book, a compendium of renovated Cold War polemics, will change no minds. Those who have looked with favor on Nixon and his brand of geopolitics in the past will not be disappointed; those who have not will find it a paranoid and self-justifying comic book, tediously rehashing old arguments and hair-raising tales of the Red Menace circa 1980, weighed down by an endless--and pretentious--string of quotes from Karl Marx to Richard Pipes...
...posthumous exuberant comic novel, laughter prevails. Ignatius J. Reilly, 30, is a monumental slob whose mere appearance on the streets of New Orleans makes policemen itch to arrest...
Only once does the comic energy flag and seriousness take over: a series of afflicted towns-people visits Khlestakov, and on a dimly lit stage two women plead for his assistance in tedious, unexpectedly serious tones. It seems like a screwed-up bit of pacing. But then a macabre, unforgettable vision appears: a group of eerie, frazzled black scarecrows in a Brownian movement behind the transparent plastic sheet that forms the stage's rear boundary, staring at Khlestakov like a second, ghostly audience. In his impenetrable complacency, he can ignore them with a wave of his hand...