Word: cleverisms
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Someone at technology news site, Cnet, came up with the clever idea of running a poll to learn the age of people who use Amazon's miracle book reader, the Kindle. Seven hundred people responded, which puts the survey somewhat below what researchers would expect from Gallup, but it is a reasonable straw poll, nonetheless...
...excavations of ruined business plans led him to conclude that a wise organization vigorously questions its own clever ideas; dissent is encouraged, and skepticism is built in. As luck would have it, that's precisely the kind of operation the Founders created with their slow-moving clockwork of checks and balances. But in times like these - periods of crisis and one-party rule - skepticism and dissent can seem unpatriotic, and the flawed ideas of smart people can easily get out of hand...
Russia has crafted its role by using its two most valuable assets - vast energy resources and mountains of military hardware - to cut a series of clever deals. In 2006, for example, then President Vladimir Putin flew a delegation of oil, gas and defense executives to Algeria. Putin negotiated to sell $7.5 billion worth of combat jets, missiles and tanks to the government, while Russian energy giants Gazprom and Lukoil secured key oil and gas concessions in the North African nation. And Putin offered an extra sweetener: he wrote off Algeria's near $5 billion Soviet-era debt. Then there...
That said, The Mentalist works because it's such an elegant example of its kind; if it's comfort food, it's prime-grade meat loaf. Much credit goes to the sly scripts, overseen by Bruno Heller (HBO's Rome), which take the viewer to familiar places by clever routes, providing a jocular corrective to the relentless noir gore of CSI et al. The mysteries are engaging but not byzantine; you can probably figure out the culprit just a step before Jane does. And who doesn't want a handsome man to make him or her feel smart...
...similarity to Facebook is no accident. Google profiles are the search giant's fiendishly clever attempt to turn your ego-surfing pain into their gain. By giving users a modicum of control over the results that appear on a search for their name, Google hopes to establish a social network beachhead and take on wildly popular sites like Facebook and MySpace. Facebook users who otherwise couldn't be bothered to set up a separate profile page on Google might find the idea appealing if it gives them some control over the Google search results for their name...