Word: decibel
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...most-used unit to measure sound is the decibel, named in honor of Alexander Graham Bell, and defined as the smallest difference in loudness that the human ear can detect...
Undemocratic? Lately, dissent over both the mechanics and the morality of the U.S. selective-service system has reached a decibel count unmatched since the program first began-25 years, 81,000,000 registrants and 13,500,000 inductees ago. There are the predictable complaints about deferment of such people as New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath (4F with a legitimately bum knee) and Lynda Bird Johnson's boy friend, $200,000-a-year Actor George Hamilton (3A because he is his mother's sole support...
...hopeless inefficiency and bad planning. Businessmen were soon complaining about government interference; everyone else griped about the junta's delay in calling elections. Recently, the political right, center and left formed a united opposition that erupted in a series of demonstrations by merchants and students alike. As the decibel count climbed in Quito and the commercial capital of Guayaquil, the junta's patience began running out. Two weeks ago, 500 troops armed with rifles and machine guns swarmed onto the campus of Quito's Central University, firing into the air, hustling 800 students and professors...
...Lawrence Rothman have pointedly avoided the customary chamber-of-horrors approach in their documentary history of the Polish Jews. There are no closeups of bulldozers pushing bodies into mass graves, no shots of the prisoners of Treblinka and Auschwitz. The narra tor, Theodore Bikel, never raises his voice a decibel above conversational level. Instead, with a rare collection of stills and film clips, the movie quietly tells the history of Jewish life in Poland, a history that took a millennium to evolve and four years to be obliterated...
...rely on a 1924 French law that says: "The right of an aerial vehicle to fly over private property cannot be exercised in such conditions as to interfere with the rights of the proprietor." Those rights, said the plaintiff, were clearly violated since the jets created a 115-decibel din, a nerve-snapping 45 decibels above what scientists say humans can tolerate. To the airline's shock a court of appeals upheld Rossow, noting only that any lack of effort to soundproof the Blue Bird should cut the still-to-be decided damage award...