Word: abruptness
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...days dragged on, Noriega underwent abrupt mood shifts. One night he sat in the kitchen and swapped stories with Laboa while awaiting dinner. The next day he never left his room. Recalled Laboa: "He talked very little, nodded a lot. He is impenetrable." Some diplomatic observers thought Noriega was showing classic signs of drug withdrawal. But a pharmacist who examined him in the nunciature concluded that he was not an addict. "Poor Noriega," said a diplomat posted to the Vatican in Rome. "No drugs, no booze, no sex -- and eating Vatican food...
...comrades. As the Soviet editor Vitali Tretyakov has written, Gorbachev has a "subtle perception of the balance of economic and political variables not only today but ((an appreciation of where)) this balance will be . . . tomorrow and what must be done to forestall a rolling back ((caused)) by too abrupt an advance." Thus, at recent party and government meetings, Gorbachev placated conservatives by fending off a challenge to the party's "leading role," at the same time soothing radicals by indicating that communist primacy is necessary only during "the present complex stage...
...with healthier partners. Instead of the robust annual sales growth of 15% to 20% that the industry enjoyed in the early 1980s, computer revenues will expand an estimated 6% to 8% during the next few years. That pace would delight most industrialists, but among computer makers it represents an abrupt comedown. Profits are being squeezed even more. Last week the world's No. 1 and No. 2 computer makers announced sharply lower earnings during the most recent quarter. IBM said its profits declined nearly 30%, to $877 million, and Digital Equipment's earnings were off more than...
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN. John Nevin, the crusty chairman of Firestone, gives credit to Japan's Bridgestone for bailing out his company with a $2.6 billion buyout last year. But that has not removed the vast differences in the ways the two companies communicate. "I'm seen as terribly abrupt and abrasive," says Nevin. "If you're very direct, you're admired in American culture. The Japanese culture is much more subtle. I can never get them to tell me what they actually mean, and they may think I'm rude and crass. But both sides are only behaving in ways familiar...
...rackety Redgraves with ego intact: "She was the only one of us who wasn't shy. If someone asked her to get up and sing, it wouldn't have bothered her for three seconds." The family's expectation that Redgrave would go into show business was tempered by her abrupt adolescent growth spurt to an eventual 5 ft. 11 in. She towered over classmates of both sexes and was considered too tall for anything but character parts. Her father had her study ballet so she would move well and tap dancing so she might have a chance at musical comedy...