Word: explainers
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...genetic polymorphisms is an interesting and very controversial way of investigating psychiatric illness. There is little question that people's mental states are the product of both genetic and environmental influences; nature and nurture co-choreograph our intellectual steps and missteps. Still, it often seems superficial and reductionist to explain complex mental machinations with a chromosome number and base substitution. How can we possibly acknowledge the flair of the human thought process by merely pinpointing a genetic locus...
...taken for the sleepy indifference of a fat and happy populace. But her larger charge--that the two parties, in thrall to a self-satisfied elite, have become homogeneous, to the detriment of a robust political debate--is far more plausible. Anyone who doubts it should be forced to explain the difference between George Bush's "compassionate conservatism" (or is it "conservative compassion"?) and Al Gore's "pragmatic idealism" (or is it "idealistic pragmatism"?) in 300 words or less. With both parties staking claim to the same territory, she sees room for something new and, of course, for herself...
Midland even informs Bush's policy preferences. Not long ago, on a campaign swing to Oregon, he tried to explain to a group of factory workers why he believes a portion of their Social Security should be invested in private accounts. "Maybe it's because I was raised in West Texas, far away from the center of power," Bush said, "and I trust individuals." McKinnon and a film crew flew to Midland last month to shoot footage for the convention film, and references to Bush's homestead are sure to find their way into the convention speech...
...days now, investigators, police experts and television-news viewers have been watching and rewatching a 28-sec. tape. In that short yet endless sequence, they scan for clues to explain why so many Philadelphia policemen are surrounding a man, stomping and punching him as he lies on the ground, wounded...
...explain it? Passing into boreal regions may tend to make a person tediously provident and literal-minded, as if the impending killer winter were too serious a matter to permit a trifling play of mere imagination. I was once trapped for three congealed hours (he actually locked the door) in the office of the director of the Port of Duluth, Minn., as he explained to me (as 'twere Toronto's utility rates) the hateful, intricate bureaucratic problems of his work. I escaped by simulating cardiac arrest...