Word: digit
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...long-impending irritation finally arrived this week. A publishing firm in Lexington, Mass., wrote to request something or other and included in its return address a number, 02173-8087. So here it finally was, the unrememberable nine-digit ZIP code. Actually the awesome thing was officially "implemented" in the fall of 1983, but only 4% of all items in the mail carry "ZIP + 4." The target of this particular request could not recall ever having been asked to use a nine-digit return address...
...aggravation? If he ignored the ZIP code entirely, thus challenging the U.S. Postal Service to try to find the historic town of Lexington without any numerical clues to guide it, would the letter go hopelessly astray? Sure, he has heard the postal authorities' soothing declarations that the nine-digit ZIP is designed to move mail faster and at a discount to firms that use it, but he suspects that if that thing poking under the edge of the tent looks like a camel and smells like a camel, it probably is a camel...
...shown to the highway patrolman who has just seen the Target run a stop sign. The computers apparently can't deal with a complicated concept like the name Otto, but they will know almost instantaneously whether F18332, etc., has forgotten any parking tickets or whether the 22-digit bank account includes any checks that bounced...
...most harm to the military's readiness to fight: funds for operations, manpower, maintenance, training and supplies. Warns House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin, with perhaps a touch of hyperbole: "What you're seeing is a defense budget going down as fast as it went up, with double-digit negative growth in the future...
...your doctor's office, the emergency room, the MRI machine, even your home. "Resistance is at an all-time low," says Neal Patterson, CEO of Cerner, an e-health company based in Kansas City, Mo. Cerner and Allscripts are racking up quarter after quarter of double-digit sales growth...