Sentences with phrase «as facile»

Siltation is often given as a facile explanation, but doesn't fit with observed geology, or written records.

A typically innocuous motif, frequently dispensed as facile encouragement, in Ratcliff's hands suggests apocalyptic dread.

Some experts regarded him as a facile realist, not an artist but merely an illustrator.

The decision to double down on the film's already latent tension between authenticity and delusion doesn't feel conceptually off, but may prove divisive to viewers, as it comes across as facile, or at least too simple, a final refuge for characters already given no past or future.

Her choice is at the heart of a piece oft dismissed as a facile Cain & Abel intrigue, despite that it only provides a surface glance off the brother's relationship to one another and their father.

The entire cast comes off as real people that are just trying to figure out how they should react to someone as facile and artificial as Roger.

It is all too easy to dismiss Teilhard as a facile optimist, without penetrating to the root of his desperate vision.

We need agencies to become as facile as we are in the data and as close to the business as we are.

Not exact matches

In 1918, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips published «American Negro Slavery,» which framed slavery as a labor agreement between masters and happy slaves — facile thinking that persists today.

This contention is not defeated merely by a critic's facile claim not to be conscious of any such nonsensuous perception of one's own «self,» or of anything describable as experience mediating one's experiences of trees, dogs, and fire hydrants.

It is the discipline of a church willing to be somewhat tentative in its hope, to see faith as a now - but - not - yet sort of thing, the discipline of keeping close to those whose sad lives challenge our facile assertions of deliverance.

I believe that Muller's mistake is rooted in a too facile assimilation of Hume and Burke (Burke attacked metaphysical politics and not metaphysics per se, and assuredly believed that custom as «second nature» was deeply rooted in an unchangeable human and social nature) and in a general failure to confront fully the important conservative critique of relativism and historicism.

One would never guess, furthermore, from Wolterstorff's presentation that contemporary advocates of marriage as irreducibly procreative have also thought deeply about the reality of marriage past childbearing age, about infertility and contraception, and offered sophisticated responses that make laugh lines like Wolterstorff's seem entirely facile.

Scientific method, though, can not reconcile itself to teleological perspectives and, therefore, must reject any such facile covenants of man with a world that is alien to his longings for ultimate meaning.2 Monod's position is reminiscent of innumerable others that see the reading of purpose into nature as analogous to our subjectively superimposing colorful secondary qualities onto starkly colorless «objective» and neutral primary qualities.

As Whitehead so magnificently said it, «The book of Job is the revolt against the facile solution, so esteemed by fortunate people, that the sufferer is the evil person» (RM 49).

We must begin by casting suspicion on those speculative theodicies that postulate a facile divine harmony or rational world order as the solution to the problem of evil.

It is perhaps as well to state explicitly that if the reader indulges in the facile vice of bifurcation not a word of what I have here written will be intelligible.

I know it's facile to point at the very obvious change and cite that as a cause for concern, but I do think he's trying to find his way in the immediate events following the Bones separation.

This is also worth a downvote as it uses «communism» in a facile way, when it would have to discuss the meaning of communism as used in this answer to answer the question.

However, Mr Howells described their collective opinions on the link between terrorism and foreign policy as «facile».

But her comparison with the notorious anti-communist witch - hunt by US senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s was branded as «facile» by Labour backbencher Stephen Pound, who said MPs had only themselves to blame for their current difficulties.

Many of these aphorisms reinforce the too facile portrayal of scientists as theorists and explorers, while engineers are solvers of real - world problems.

The notion that saturated fats per se cause heart disease as well as cancer is not only facile, it is just plain wrong.

From screenwriter Chris Terrio's self - consciously snappy dialogue to the amped - up thriller climax, actor - director Ben Affleck's third feature succeeds as a savvy, facile crowd - pleaser by hewing closely to the same Hollywood conventions that it mildly mocks.

The tenets of GnS, as a subgenre: A facile, default, entirely unearned cynicism that attempts to pass itself off as irony.

This season, having already offered up Lindsay's perhaps too - facile explanation for what makes Dexter tick, the writers seem to be digging deeper into Butcher Boy's psyche, even as his colleagues find themselves digging deeper into his after - hours work.

For the most part, the movie is really a black comedy about Los Angeles - style self - obsession spiced with sudden drug interludes that jar you for a minute, then fade from memory as we head on to the next (occasionally facile) showbiz send - up.

Thing that's interesting about «The Simple Life» is that it's as worthless and worthy of derision as Nicole and Paris, products, both, of a fast, facile culture that favours beautiful people so vacuous that as soon as the wind shifts, the destruction of them is brought to pass with zero effort in zero time.

Perhaps to compensate for its facile plot, the camera often lingers on close - up shots of the three leads as they each process their feelings, fresh trauma quietly unloading in their eyes as they serenely try to accept what has transpired.

For a while, the laughs come in great big waves, after which they wash ashore as mere chuckles, weighed down by facile dramatics.

At some point, American Beauty isn't a lean satire so much as a reductive, facile, mean - spirited sitcom that — perhaps inadvertently, for what it's worth — sees Lester's desire for a muscle car, a job flipping burgers, the freedom to call his wife and daughter «bitch,» and a liaison with jailbait Angela (Mena Suvari) as the secret of life.

It's as though Olen and Harkins have overdeveloped their tone - y humor muscles, and now, even when they don't mean to, they can't help but flex some facile irony.

In a cameo that encapsulates the film's facile mix of swagger and kitsch, New York «Naked Cowgirl» street performer Sandy Kane appears as a resident who insists on sunbathing topless.

Still, there's something about Grant's performance that carries the film; the whiff of anxiety and facile insincerity that fuels Grant's iconic turns in screwball comedies serves him well as the slightly askew Johnnie.

The usual critical suspects have already taken the movie as further evidence of the Coens «oft - alleged misanthropy, but this is a facile, if not entirely backward, reading.

But as a symptom of that facile societal desire for superficial uplifts and comforting negative stereotypes, the smoothness of the coating for this bitter pill deserves some measure of profound distaste.

His stereotypes mean something, offering as Berg does examples of the contrary and the baseline to offset easy categorization and facile narrative drive.

Facile, but good in a pinch; apply it to Todd Haynes's fascinating I'm Not There and suddenly there's the thought that the film is an autopsy of film - as - history to this moment — an analysis of how the moving image has become in this century the only real way we access history as a people, as well as of how the image, eternally malleable within the image - maker, has now become malleable within a mainframe.

They hoke up meaningful stories such as «We Are Marshall» and «Friday Night Lights» to get facile, unquestioned, reflexive responses from their audience.

Regrettably, the modern characters are so facile that they barely qualify as two - dimensional.

The effect is a bit like when a cool indie band slathers a pop song in a thick layer of noise and distortion; something perceived as frivolous or facile is newly coded in one gesture as palatable to a more serious audience.

When Miranda Decklemann started as a teacher leader at Viveiros Elementary, she was facile in analyzing multiple pieces of data to improve performance within her classroom — and she assumed her team of 1st grade teachers would be similarly skilled.

Based on her facile maneuvering (and perhaps aided by her quick wit), Taub offered her a gig as a production assistant so she could dip her toes in the precision - driving business.

The story that has pulled me through Assassin's Creed III — and it's as powerful a pull as any videogame story — is the real story of America, outside the textbook beats of this game's facile historical perspective.

More facile interpretations of the latter half of this characterization have positioned Reinhardt as a proto - Minimalist, citing his pioneering use of many of the movement's shibboleths: modularity, seriality, monochromy, impersonal facture, etc..

Liu has invented a kind of weeping realism that surrenders to the erosion of memory and the passage of time, while also bringing faded photographic images vividly to life as rich, facile paintings.

The gallery devoted to the artist - as - celebrity, for instance, which typifies the work based on a conceptual twist, is off - putting in its self - regard and facile irony, though the puppets seated in a corner of the floor, which were conceived by Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija as stand - ins for fellow artists at a 2005 panel discussion, possess a certain flat - footed charm.

The unpredictable, rich yet uningratiating dimensional materiality of the paint strokes in these paintings, and the density of mark making has generally been of greater interest to me than the late paintings, some of which were on view in Mitchell's 2002 retrospective at the Whitney Museum — I saw these as too big, too empty, too facile, without tension.

It's filled with cool, facile painting which blends its color and marks like expert mixology: Heidi Jahnke's beautiful, but Dana Schutzian, pastiche; Peyton Cosell Turner's faux eyelash wallpaper; Elizabeth Jaeger's ceramic hands used as the centerpiece of a working fishtank; a dash of Helen Frankenthaler and Jutta Koether.

This facile tactic — one artwork loosely related to the convolute, plus one text, then repeat — persists throughout the show: four photos of mannequins in shop windows by Lee Friedlander, each titled New York City and taken in the late aughts, illustrate «The Flaneur»; Mike Kelley's aluminum light fixture, modeled on his childhood home in Detroit and casting an ominous, unfriendly glow, serves as an inconsequential helpmeet to «Dream City and Dream House, Dreams of the Future, Anthropological Nihilism, Jung»; Good Hand Bad Hand (2010), Rodney Graham's photographic diptych mounted on lightboxes of a stone - faced man playing poker is used in concert with «Prostitution, Gambling.»