Word: scoff
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Outside the battle lines, bystanders asked each other what all the shooting was really about. A strong hint came from Italy. There, Msgr. Albino Galletto, head of the Catholic Cinematographic Center, suggested that in the largely non-Catholic U.S. such a movie might lead non-Catholics to scoff at the church's teaching...
...more sobersided fellow artists deplore Marcel Vertès. They sneer at his "commercialism" (he does covers for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, along with book illustrations, perfume ads, ballet sets, china, furniture, silk print and needlepoint designs), but can't help envying his commercial success. They scoff at his preference for pretty and elegant subjects, but have to admit, gritting their teeth, that Vertes (rhymes with bear says) draws and paints very prettily and elegantly indeed. They call him superficial, forget that such masters as Fragonard were...
...Angry Rabbit. When at last he arrived in Paris, Naundorff was a down-at-heel beggar. But he found an important champion. The lost Dauphin's old governess had come to scoff at the beggar's claims, but when she saw his prominent front teeth, the triangular vaccination on his arm and the pigeon-shaped mole of Louis Bourbon on Naundorff's thigh, she became convinced that he was the Dauphin. Naundorff even had a scar on his upper lip like that which the imprisoned Dauphin had got from the bite of an angry rabbit; the Dauphin...
...range from "fairly good through mediocre to downright bad." Physics is "science at its best," and much of chemistry ("an art [often] related to cooking, instead of a true science") passes muster. But even these have serious contradictions. They make claims to the discovery of immutable truths, and yet scoff at all philosophical absolutes. Actually, their truth is not truth at all, but "a body of well-supported probable opinion only, and its ideas may be exploded at any time...
Some practical computermen scoff at such picturesque talk, but others recall odd behavior in their own machines. Robert Seeber of I.B.M. says that his big computer has a very human foible: it hates to wake up in the morning. The operators turn it on, the tubes light up and reach a proper temperature, but the machine is not really awake. A problem sent through its sleepy wits does not get far. Red lights flash, indicating that the machine has made an error. The patient operators try the problem again. This time the machine thinks a little more clearly. At last...