Word: compact
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...compact art form, and somewhat unnatural. A person feels uncomfortable composing a little song of himself for the classifieds. The personal ad is like haiku of self-celebration, a brief solo played on one's own horn. Someone else should be saying these things. It is for others to pile up the extravagant adjectives ("sensitive, warm, witty, vibrant, successful, handsome, accomplished, incredibly beautiful, cerebral and sultry") while we stand demurely by. But someone has to do it. One competes for attention. One must advertise. One must chum the waters and bait the hook, and go trolling for love and laughter...
...arched doorways have been cut into the south wall, alas, diffusing some of the compact power of the hall, but direct passageways to the wide open spaces of the train shed were deemed essential. Out there, things do get interesting. The vast, gently arched roof is a 110-ft.-high web of steel trusses fitted with alternating wall-to-wall strips of clear glass and unpainted wood planks. The glass and fir are all new, but almost every bit of steel, 2,700 tons, is original. The space is gloriously scaled, and the strips of roof make for neat plays...
Millions of individuals certainly have. Tempted by easy credit and a cornucopia of everything from cars to compact disks, consumers across the U.S. are becoming overextended. The Mortgage Bankers Association said last month that mortgage delinquencies reached 6.19% in the first quarter of 1985, the highest level since that group began keeping records in 1953. A separate report by the American Bankers Association showed additional signs of strain. The organization, which represents 13,000 large and small lenders, said 2.4% of all consumer installment loans were delinquent at the end of the first quarter. That represented a two-year high...
...Before compact disks came along, the method of capturing and replaying music had changed little since Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. Conventional records store sound in the form of tiny waves cut into vinyl grooves. When a diamond or sapphire stylus passes over them, its vibrations create a tiny electrical current that is converted back into sound. Tape players work in a similar way, reading sound from magnetized particles on plastic ribbon. Both methods involve a process known as analog recording, in which the music is represented as a physical replica, or analog, of the original sound...
...Compact disks replace the old technology with a digital system based on computers and laser light. On a CD, sound is broken down into binary digits (zeros and ones). Those numbers are stored on an aluminum disk in some 15 billion microscopic pits. When the CD plays, rotating at up to 500 r.p.m., a laser silently scans the pits and then beams their information to a microcomputer that converts the digits back into sound. Because no mechanical part touches the disk's surface, the resulting tone is virtually free of distortion...