Word: wised
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...streak of cynicism ran through him as deep, his creator Raymond Chandler might say, as a spotted geister in a Chicago overcoat sent back-stroking in the blue Pacific. He was a hardened private dick, a real pro, and could trade quips and insults with any manner of wise-cracking low life. When a dumb and slutty millionaire's daughter tries to lead him on in The Big Sleep, cooing "you're cute," the unarousable Marlowe answers back, "What you see is nothing. I got a belly dancer on my right thigh." A real joker...
There was one thing you could always say about Marlowe, though (as you could for all of the great city-wise private investigators in pre-World War II detective fiction): he was a man seeped in his surroundings. He knew all the personality types and all the hazy sights and smells of Los Angeles in the 1930s--right down to the bizarre styles of architecture and where you could find them. They were his life blood. If a guy came from the area, Marlowe could size him up and put him in his place in the time it took...
Perhaps the most outspoken opponent of minimal competency is Educator Arthur Wise, whose influential 1968 treatise, Rich Schools, Poor Schools, argued that children in both affluent and underprivileged school districts had the right to an equal education. Wise is currently working on another book, tentatively titled Hyper-Rationalization, which condemns competency testing for "narrowing the goals of education and prompting teachers to teach the test." Wise fears that minimal competency entails the extension to education of such business-school concepts as cost effectiveness and accountability. Says he of minimal competency advocates: "It is as if they want to set goals...
...stand for each of his protagonists, an unwanted pregnancy and consequent flirtation with abortion, not to mention such urban delights as an attempted mugging, sudden death in the indifferent streets and a racist cab driver (Irwin Corey, working hard) whom Gardner tries desperately to make us see as a wise fool, the author has his work cut out for him. The smell of damp garbage never quite leaves this enterprise...
...more that scientists learn about the world weather machine, the more they realize that it is an engine of enormous complexity. They are only beginning to figure out how it works or predict what it will do next. Until man has a better understanding of the weather, he is wise not to tamper with...