But such people often exhibit the less benign aspects of smart talk as well: they focus on the negative, and they favor unnecessarily complex or abstract language.
US strategists argue that Agent Orange was a prototype smart weapon, a benign tactical herbicide that saved many hundreds of thousands of American lives by denying the North Vietnamese army the jungle cover that allowed it ruthlessly to strike and feint.
The administration, whose efforts to restrict civil liberties have even brought Bob Barr and Maxine Waters together in opposition, is so eager to stifle dissent in the media that its press secretary publicly denounced a smart-aleck as benign as a late-night comic -- in this case Bill Maher -- for a tasteless wisecrack.
Why should a stone-cold killer like Roof get treated better than a teenager in a bikini who says something "smart" or whatever other benign, non-violent behavior that police use as justification for slamming people against the ground?
But smart talk tends to have other, less benign components: first, it focuses on the negative, and second, it is unnecessarily complicated or abstract (or both).
In July the Olympic torch should cast a benign light on the corporation, as sports devotees use smart new interactive tools to replay favourite moments.Beyond the celebrations, change looms.
The multiparameter Smart Probe for breast cancer 1 mm in diameter can clearly differentiate normal breast, benign lesions, and breast carcinoma.
Smarting under the attacks on Mary Barton, Gaskell retreated in her mind to the benign oddities of her youth in Knutsford.
Last November, Mrs. Smart was admitted to the Phillips Ambulatory Care Center of Beth Israel for a hysteroscopic procedure, the removal of a benign fibroid tumor.
Mukherjee describes a 2015 study by Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University in which a smart machine was asked to classify 14,000 images that dermatologists had found to have abnormalities (either benign or cancerous).
