Word: knacks
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...teacher homicide just a bit less amusing. But like last year's Apt Pupil, this really is a story about education--about the wary exchange in an old dark house between a nasty adult, seemingly trapped but still full of guile, and the bright teen who underestimates Satan's knack for temptation. No teen is likely to see the film and take a crossbow to his hated teacher's house. Indeed, nobody is likely to get much out of this slack parable. It is too empty to applaud, too insignificant to deplore...
...sword boat Hannah Boden as it steams out with a five-man crew from the Massachusetts coast to the Grand Banks and then strings out 40 miles of line to catch swordfish. The book brims with the expertise of commercial fishing--and is especially interesting on Greenlaw's championship knack for reading subtle changes in water temperatures to find where the fish are. The captain radiates brisk sanity and humor. Being a woman, she declares, is "no big deal" (though Greenlaw, 38, writes wistfully now and then of wanting to get married and raise children). As captain, she relies...
...operas each summer (the current season runs through Aug. 23), is not about gleaming high Cs; instead, the show is the star. Artistic director Paul Kellogg and music director Stewart Robertson hire young artists who know how to move as well as sing and directors and designers with a knack for knocking the rust off tired masterpieces. Add to this the special pleasure of watching opera in a theater small enough that you can see Rigoletto's eyebrow twitch from the back row of the balcony, and you get productions so bold and vivid that they make you remember...
...Teng-Hui has a knack for lighting political fires. His allies say the 11-year President of Taiwan is simply a determined nationalist following the wishes of the vast majority of his electorate. But domestic critics call him a loose cannon, and his adversaries in Beijing regard him as a truly dangerous provocateur. While he likes to talk and often does so injudiciously, Lee is a shrewd politician consciously engaged in a high-risk game of chicken with China...
...Crowd-Pleasers have the unique ability to score positive numbers in the polls without actually declaring either candidacy or policies ?- rather like George W. Bush in the early part of 1999. Crowd-Pleasers try to mimic Ronald Reagan?s knack for making people feel good about him without ever really being able to articulate why (although unlike today?s wussy centrists, of course, Reagan actually took firm and controversial policy stands). Of course, media plays a critical role in generating those feelings. But it wouldn?t be possible without some basic charisma. They?re not sure why they...