Word: ruses
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...merely extending his or her finger, pedestrian can control traffic signals, turning green lights read and bringing cars to a virtual standstill. But how powerful is the cross-walk button? can it really turn a traffic light red or is it simply a ruse devised to calm impatient street-crossers? according to Don Burgess associate traffic engineer at the Boston Department of Transportation, the answer...
...have seen this pattern before. Whenever NATO or the U.N. has made noise about action against the Serbs, they have made some small concession--and then gone on with the killing. Western leaders have fallen for this ruse over and again...
...course, the ruse counted for nothing; college tuition, which he also provided, was much more effective. Like most Jews who anglicized their names, my family continued to advertise its real identity in many ways. By the time my father drank toasts at his grandsons' bar-mitzvah parties, the imperative for disguise was gone. Pamela Nadell, professor of Jewish studies at American University, traces the shift to the mid-1960s, when Israel's military prowess evoked group pride and the black-is-beautiful movement struck a chord among Jews, though few Jews went as far as some blacks who adopted African...
Improbable? Of course. All cross-dressing comedies, from Charley's Aunt onward, are improbable. Most of the fun comes from seeing people fooled by what seems to us, who are in on the joke, a completely penetrable ruse. Curiously enough, what's really unpersuasive about Mrs. Doubtfire -- not to say draggy -- is its nondrag sequences. The children are goody-goodies, without mischief or quirks, and their father's relationship with them is unclouded by even minor impatience, let alone major outrage. The script, by Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon, presents ideal fatherhood as a form of saintliness...
Colwin probably intends these paragons of unoriginal thinking as types, to highlight Jane Louise's `normal' abnormality. We all worry because we don't lead lives of endless Kodak moments strung together, but no one really does, Colwin reassures. This cunning ruse fails, in part because Jane Louise just isn't that normally abnormal, but mainly because it makes for dull reading...