Word: smileyness
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WHAT is the moral of this story? In the ongoing quest to achieve "user-friendliness," computer makers such as Apple have given us simplicity in place of comprehension. Although smiley faces, frowning faces, and cutesy language like "mouse" help people overcome their initial jitters with machines, manufacturers won't allow users to understand anything remotely technical. Macintoshes are so easy to use because we have no idea how they work...
THIS unfair definition of intelligence seems to be partly rooted in childhood insecurities. It is difficult to forget those early years of school when the teacher passed back a corrected quiz and we students fidgeted nervously, anxious over whether we got a smiley-face sticker on the top of our paper. Then some students needed to reassure themselves that they had done well by asserting that someone else had done worse. Then the mean-spiritedness of childhood emerged, and words like "stupid" and "dummy" entered children's vocabularies. These insecurities followed us to adulthood, and our biases about intelligence remain...
...novel does not lend itself so readily to sequels: the plots are more apocalyptic, and even if the characters survive, their undercover effectiveness usually does not. But just as John le Carre managed to bring back dumpy, deceptively bland George Smiley, so Brian Freemantle has managed to write six captivating novels featuring scruffy, wily Charlie Muffin. He is a brilliant survivor who in his time has outwitted the Soviets, the Chinese, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia and his own British service, which early in his debut novel set him up to be killed. In See Charlie Run (Bantam...
...moments that sometimes occur in the tortured destinies of the superpowers. Archadversaries come together and find their instincts are to like each other, then politics and duty send them off into the dark night to battle again. Author John le Carre could not have written it better: Spymaster George Smiley goes to Moscow and feels the great sadness of mankind's grim contention...
...started the Cheka, progenitor of the KGB. The statue stands in a circle in front of the building. Helms tried to make his way across the congested street but could not. The policeman refused to halt the rushing traffic. Helms stopped, chuckled and went off -- just as George Smiley would have done...