Word: shrewd
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...Ervin's counterpoint. After a year of judicial sloth, he and his colleagues argued, television has actually accelerated justice. Facts that seemed irretrievable are now brought out in microseconds. Mystery figures are exposed as quite ordinary men. The conspiracy and cover-up no longer seem the work of shrewd political masterminds. Indeed, the figures on the screen are frightening not for their brilliant malevolence but because of their very ordinariness...
While all these elements have contributed to the improved financial status of the Press, the major force working within the Press is Rosenthal himself. Unlike Carroll, he combines impeccable editorial credentials with a shrewd and solid publishing mind. He is aware of publishing market trends and has already begun gearing the Press's activities to these trends. "Books always feel the economic pinch first," Rosenthal said last week. "The problems that the Press ran into here were largely not understanding the market. After the fantastic money of the Johnson years, the Press didn't prepare for less affluent times...
...method: shrewd conclusion based on empirical observation. What the eyes could see, the wits could solve. At the zenith of the Darwinian revolution, Oliver Wendell Holmes assured his countrymen: "Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper-chamber, if he has common-sense on the ground floor...
...emphasized, is not here discussing the serious scholar, the so-called "expert." He is referring to the mass of individuals who gravitate around the universities and media and expend most of their energy promulgating ideas which they experience only at second hand. Kristol quotes Robert A. Nisbet, a shrewd observer of the academic scene, who has estimated that a majority of all academics in the universities in this country "have so profound a distaste for the classroom and for the pains of genuine scholarship or creative thought that they will seize upon anything... to exempt themselves respectably from each...
Senate Styles. As the hearings continue, the distinctive styles of the Senators will become as familiar as those of celebrated TV performers. After stumbling over a difficult word ("incredulity") in a written statement, Sam Ervin at times seemed like a drawling humbler, but he also proved to be a shrewd chairman capable of suddenly shifting into the most penetrating questions...