Word: dialed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...setting their thermostats by computer, futurists are now envisioning a brave new world of one-stop networking. Commuters will set burglar alarms, start air conditioners and program their VCRs--all through the digital keypads of their mobile phones. When appliances break down, homeowners will plug them into diagnosis outlets, dial the manufacturers and be told in a flash precisely what has gone wrong. Television sets will interrupt broadcasts to announce that clothes dryers have completed their cycles. Viewers, with the press of a key, will tell those dryers to run the clothes through one more time...
Evangelist Jerry Falwell set up a toll-free telephone number a decade ago so followers could dial in to hear his inspirational messages and be massaged for donations. Things were heavenly until Atlanta's Edward Johnson, who holds a grudge against television evangelists, programmed his Atari to dial Falwell's number every 30 seconds. In December, Southern Bell got Johnson to deprogram his computer, but publicity over the incident inspired other Falwell foes to dial away. Among the harassers: homosexuals angered at Falwell's crusade against them. Some 25% of the 1 million toll-free calls a year were coming...
Occasionally, while the elder Guinness is turning the TV dial, searching for the news or a nature program, he comes across one of his many selves. "I switch it off within 30 seconds," he says with a slight shudder. "Once I've done something, it doesn't really have any interest for me anymore." He likes movies, but he loves the stage and is even now on the lookout for a good play. At the moment Alan Bennett (The Old Country) is his favorite English playwright; David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross), his favorite American. Between roles, Sir Alec...
Hankering after a larger share of the New York City chicken market, Frank Perdue found he had little choice but to deal with mobsters. He agreed to supply birds to Dial Poultry, a distributing company owned by sons of Gambino Family Crime Boss Paul Castellano, the Mob chieftain who was gunned down in midtown Manhattan last December. Perdue knew with whom he was dealing. Later he turned to Castellano, unsuccessfully, for assistance in easing labor troubles in Virginia. "They (the Mafia) have long tentacles," the poultry producer testified last September before the President's Commission on Organized Crime. "I figured...
Following Reagan-Gorbachev at Geneva comes another U.S.-Soviet confrontation at the summit. This time, though, the summit sits at somewhere under 20 feet and the summiteers are the world's three best pole vaulters, Billy Olson, 27, and Joe Dial, 23, of the U.S., and the U.S.S.R.'s overarching Sergei Bubka, 22. Since the start of the year, the three have bettered one another's indoor records six times, and during the past fortnight they have gone height to height in U.S. indoor track-and-field meets from New York to California and back again. The visiting Bubka emerged...