Word: smug
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...Shiva's persistent sardonic tone undermines his anecdotes' effectiveness. The reader tires quickly of his smug arrogance, and yearns for some affirmative statement about Africa. Everyone on the "dark continent" seems to be a caricature--all racist and drugged white tourists, or insufferably dogmatic bureaucrats...
...however, the audiophile down the block with all the latest equipment may be able to whip out a record smaller than a conventional 45 and put it on a machine that will scan its data with a laser. The sound will produce, in the owner, a guarded but rather smug smile, and in the envious listener the impression that his old conventional rig at home produces the tonal qualities of two Dixie cups and a thread...
...things are more frustrating than a vending machine that sits in smug silence after gobbling a harried human's coins. Michael DeNardo of Cranston, R.I., is not one to put up with such machinations. When an automaton at the foundry where he worked failed to produce the requested coffee, and the coin-return lever offered no peaceful settlement, DeNardo belted the contraption...
...rape victim, I am encouraged to see that someone is actually making progress in seeing that sex offenders won't continue to walk out of courtrooms with smug grins on their faces [April 2]. It's bad enough to suffer the humiliation of rape, but twice as bad to suffer the degradation of a court system and lawyers who regard the offender as the injured party...
Oliver Wendell Holmes, wounded three times in the Civil War, used to thunder a century ago about "this smug, oversafe corner of the world . . . a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous, untamed streaming of the world," so far removed from most human want and anguish. That has not changed much over the past decades. But now it is changing. Scarcity is catching us, and we would probably be one of the first nuclear battlegrounds if restraint ever fractured...