Word: shorthand
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Palm also conducted more conventional research with focus groups, but Hawkins' original vision turned out to be uncannily close to the final product. Its internal functions were designed with the same practicality. He invented his own simple shorthand system, called Graffiti, because handwriting-recognition software was too unreliable. (Since everyone writes letters differently, he reduced some of the most troublesome letters to basic elements: an A looks like an upside-down V, and an F resembles an upside-down L.) He powered the Pilot with AAA batteries, available everywhere. And he settled on four function buttons--for calendar, addresses...
...late-night comedy monologues--which serve as a kind of trip wire for public sentiment--Clinton's philandering has never been in doubt. He has long been an easy joke, a shorthand figure of fun right up there with staples like Michael Jackson and Pamela and Tommy Lee. Indeed, last Wednesday night as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was first breaking, Jay Leno scored a twofer on the Tonight Show with a lame joke about the Lees' wanting to see Clinton's home videos (he did a lot better with his line that Clinton's may be the second presidency...
...term is shorthand for a kind of collaboration forbidden under the law: a party and its candidates are not allowed to direct outside groups to take action on their behalf--and that includes making ads. In addition, any ads paid for by these groups cannot explicitly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate, even if they praise or trash the candidate in other ways. As long as organizations obey these technicalities, they don't have to disclose their activities publicly and can spend an unlimited amount of money on campaigns...
...best ways to kill a performance is to move ahead of the audience's prejudices. Thus Jay Leno and David Letterman can get away with portraying Bill Clinton as a pig and a lech only because viewers have already come to the same conclusion. It is our comic shorthand for Clinton. Of course, all public figures exist in shorthand versions, comic or not--that's what being a public figure is all about. For someone like Princess Diana who suffers a dramatic and untimely death, the tragedy becomes our Rorshach response: Diana, the tragically slain princess. Like J.F.K., the tragically...
...estimates that it would still take a couple of years of R. and D.--and more money, he says, than it would be worth--to create a fully realized, ready-for-its-close-up human from digital scratch. But that day is surely coming. Computer graphics--CG, in industry shorthand--have already been used to create loosely rendered virtual stunt people suitable for brief action sequences. The buzz has it that James Cameron's forthcoming Titanic will represent a leap forward with its use of CG extras, detailed down to the misty breath they exhale in the cold night...