Word: apparatus
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Their breathing apparatus-a system of tracheae that wander through the body like arteries of air-feeds oxygen to the organs up to 431 times as fast as lungs do. Their circulatory system frequently includes a mechanism that reverses blood flow when a clot obstructs the heart. A male moth's numerous "noses" are so keen that he can smell a female more than a mile away. And as for sex, insects hold the patents on mass reproduction. The East African queen termite lays 43,000 eggs a day, and in a single summer two common houseflies can multiply...
Even these devices are just a prelude. The auto companies are experimenting with a "drivometer"-a device attached to the brake, accelerator and steering apparatus that would warn a driver when he is performing sloppily. Ford is well along with a "wrist steer"-two small wheels at the driver's side that would replace the dangerous steering shaft. Engineers at G.M. are tinkering with "unicontrol," a sort of auto pilot that would pick up directional signals from the road...
Last week the Federal Communications Commission moved part way to plug the bug. An FCC order banning private use of radio devices to intercept private conversations-with a maximum fine of $500 a day for convicted snoopers-applies to scores of bugging techniques. Not affected is eavesdropping apparatus that does not use radio, such as a microphone connected by wire to a hidden listening post, or a disguised tape recorder. Law-enforcement agencies are exempt from the ban though still subject to local laws and regulations...
Dyspeptic Glutton. He was in jail because he liked to whip girls. Sometimes even a prostitute's pay is not enough for this sort of thing-De Sade's flagellating apparatus could be pretty damaging-and there were complaints about this, and also about sodomy, which carried the death penalty. His rank saved him from the gallows but not from himself. His trouble seems to have been that he was a stupendous sexual glutton and at the same time a sexual dyspeptic; too much was not enough. His pleasure was pain, and pain was his pleasure. Jail confined...
...written studies on him, and the London-Broadway hit Marat/ Sade, as well as a new paperback edition of his writings, testifies to renewed public interest. But it is also true that he is the compulsive addict of every conceivable extremity within the technical possibilities of the human sexual apparatus. What he could not do he dreamed, and what he dreamed, he wrote. His letters can be analyzed in seven deeply felt but wonderfully inconsistent categories: 1) he didn't do it (he had been accused of kidnaping young girls, and there was a suspicion of murder...