Word: distressed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rugged that, short of heavenly help, finding them quickly seemed impossible. Yet through a miracle of the space age, the help came. On its regular sweep over western Canada, a Soviet satellite, equipped with special electronic "ears" to hear the beeps of small planes or ships in distress, picked up the downed aircraft's automatic emergency beacon and relayed the signals to an antenna outside Ottawa. There a computer quickly used them to obtain a navigational "fix" on the crash site. Within hours, a helicopter plucked the three men out of the wilderness, injured but alive...
...speedy rescue was the first real-life test of a new breed of satellites called SARSATS (for search and rescue satellites) that will be circling the planet in years to come. Carrying special receivers tuned to standard international distress frequencies, these electronic watchdogs will be able to locate troubled craft equipped with inexpensive beacons almost anywhere on earth. Beaming their information back to the ground through a network of dish-shaped antennas, they should ensure prompt rescues of, say, a junk in the South China Sea or a yachtsman rounding the Horn singlehanded...
...teaching psychology and counseling at the Graduate School of Education for five years. She's suing Richard C. Atkinson, chancellor of the University of California at San Diego and former head of the National Science Foundation, saying he was guilty of "fraud and deceit" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress" during an affair he and Perry allegedly had between about 1976 and 1978. Atkinson denies any liason...
Next: loneliness at sight of large and cheerful groups at every turn, irresolvable personality clashes with roommates, cold war with hometown sweetheart, distress at ridiculous string of accomplishments boasted by everyone else in entryway, despair at impossible equation of things to do and time available, fear of extraordinary academic failure (with concurrent anxiety that admissions-office computer made error), agony that infatuating face prefers one's own roommate, disquieting sense that life at home has changed in one's absence, exasperation at sarcastic attitude of hometown friends and family about fancyschmancy college (with cute regional pronunciation of college name...
McDonald has seen enough computer-related distress in the past two years to design psychological tests to sell to companies that want to spot victims of the new ailment. According to McDonald, the sufferers are trying to keep up with machines that never sleep and never deviate from perfect linear logic. "Since human relations are neither linear nor logical," he says, "they grow increasingly isolated from their families and the whole feeling world...