Word: plainspokenness
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Kilby, now 76 and largely retired, was understandably surprised by the belated honor. "The integrated circuit didn't have much new physics in it," the 6-ft. 6-in., plainspoken inventor said with a shrug to reporters who gathered outside his door. But the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences thought otherwise. Awarding Kilby half the 2000 physics prize (total value: $915,000), it noted that his chip created nothing less than a revolution in solid-state physics, not to mention a $231 billion worldwide industry for the microchips that are the heart of today's electronic wizardry, from computers...
...this hypocrisy? After all, in seeking to replace a President who has gone so far as to test politically palatable vacation spots, Bush brandishes his disdain for the practice as proof of his own titanium character. He says over and over he is a "plainspoken man." But Bush is far more dependent on polls for shaping his message than he likes to admit, even if there is scant evidence that he uses them to develop fundamental policy positions. Remember Bob Jones? According to the Bush campaign's focus groups, you don't. In fact, Bush aides gleefully cite research showing...
Other great leaders were part of this process. Winston Churchill stood up to Hitler even earlier than Roosevelt did, when it took far more courage. Harry Truman, a plainspoken man with gut instincts for what was right, forcefully began the struggle against Soviet expansionism, a challenge that Roosevelt was too sanguine about. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev helped choreograph the conclusion of that sorry empire's strut upon the stage. So too did Pope John Paul II, a Pole with a passion for both faith and freedom. And if you were to pick a hero who embodied America's contribution...
McCain is winning them now, in New Hampshire and elsewhere, because people see him as plausible and plainspoken, not as a hothead but as a warrior against the "special interests," ranging from trial lawyers to tobacco makers who have government in a choke hold. If there is, as Bush has said, a crisis of cynicism about government, Bush has put a match to it with his high-octane fund raising. McCain, with his 50 staff members to Bush's 150, working out of a condemned one-story building in Virginia, isn't out giving big policy speeches. He just stands...
DIED. JESSIE FOVEAUX, 100, plainspoken great-great-grandmother who sold her first book, Any Given Day, at 98, for $1 million; in Duluth, Minn. On hearing of the sale of her memoir, which grew out of a writing class for seniors, she said, "I might just get myself a new dress...