Word: cocoons
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...Cocoon. The high-pitched whine of the jet engines has brought complaints from householders near airports, led some airports to impose restrictions that cut into the jets' payload. But despite all the uproar, the sound suppressors that every jet uses cut their noise level to that of a DC-7, makes the noise argument seem as dated as the early objections to the noise of the horseless carriage...
Perhaps the most serious problem for American and the other lines is the vanishing U.S. airspace. A jet moving at an average of ten miles a minute will require an air cocoon of 6,000 square miles 2,000 ft. deep for safety. Jets will reach heights formerly monopolized by military planes, will need precise traffic controls to keep them on their separate ways. Last summer Congress belatedly created a new jet-age federal agency, the Federal Aviation Agency, which will supplant the old Civil Aeronautics Administration on Jan. 1, take over safety-regulations functions from the Civil Aeronautics Board...
Across the unhappy island, barbed-wire barricades cocoon key buildings, seal Greek and Turkish Cypriots into separate quarters. British Tommies man machine guns on the minarets of Turkish mosques. Cyprus' nightly lullaby is the baying of search dogs. When the sirens signal curfew, the island's economy is paralyzed (loss per day: about $120,000 of Cyprus' gross daily income of $290,000). Factories are closed for lack of labor and materials. But no sooner does the curfew lift than terrorists kill another victim...
Slowly, surely, Guinness devours his part. Like a cannibal, he gnaws away at the physical details. But what he is really after is the soul. When he gets it, the gestures are pushed aside like a cocoon, and a new existence emerges. Indeed, Alec's essential gift is not for creating characters, but existences. His people are all somehow like children, playing alone in corners, a life unto themselves. "His is the art of public solitude," says Critic Tynan. "He can seem unobserved...
...loked out the plate-glass window as marquee lights winked off and Boston gathered itself into a cocoon. "No parades and no tablespoons today. Worlds revolve, nations change hands, but I just stand here, consciously dead. I crawled from loins too old with life. I am a creature of specialization, a power paddle that keeps the wheel going. I look knowledgeable; I laugh at the right jokes; I voice the proper introspective comments about the latest Book-of-the-Month Club classic. I am a vegetable...