Without even knowing why, we believe that to learn how to be human - which we have many years to do, for human beings have longer childhoods than any other species, a feature that to biologists and philosophers alike is one of our race's distinguishing characteristics - children must be surrounded by animal imagery.
In a government whose distinguishing characteristic should be a diffusion and equalization of its benefits and burdens the advantage of individuals will be augmented at the expense of the community at large.
Sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing between faith and hope.
One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.
Not everyone can come and post on Forbes; it's a very distinguishing factor for us. We vet the folks who come on board.
Many people, I've noticed by informally polling friends, are prone to distinguishing a beach read by genre. Some people thought all thrillers are beach reads; others thought all romances are. Some people thought only mass market paperbacks are eligible for beach read standards.
For me, the most important and distinguishing property of new media is interactivity. But how many people can actually create interactive games, animations, or simulations? Not very many. So, in my mind, very few people are truly literate with new media.
Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.
We live in a culture that has a real hard time distinguishing fiction from reality. Even when they're told something is fiction.
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
