Word: instrument
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...dissenters, he said. Giving them freedom to dissent was a way of allowing them to let off steam without threatening the power establishment. Thus tolerance was a form of intolerance, one of those paradoxes that abound in Marcuse. He wrote: "Freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude...
...from Senator Sam Nunn. The Georgia Democrat announced that he would vote for SALT II if annual defense spending were boosted about 5% (after inflation) for the next five years. Said he: "In the absence of such a commitment, the SALT II treaty will become nothing more than an instrument for registering emerging Soviet military superiority...
...believes that they would acquiesce to some reservations to help get the treaty through the Senate. What Moscow could do is make a distinction between substantial changes to the actual text of the treaty and reservations or understandings attached to the Senate's Resolution of Ratification, the parliamentary instrument by which the upper chamber approves treaties. U.S. legal practice makes no such distinction: understandings and reservations are just as binding on both parties to an accord as an amendment to the treaty itself. But the Soviets might be willing to overlook this point, provided that the understandings merely explain...
Last winter Venus was explored by two Pioneer spacecraft: one a radar-equipped orbiter still spewing data, the other a multiple probe that dropped five instrument packages into the Venusian atmosphere. Among the findings: the neighboring planet has an extraordinary five-layered cloud cover, is riddled by continuous lightning bolts and scarred by a rift valley and mountain peak more grandiose than any on earth, and has totally unexpected abundances of primordial neon and argon. Their presence suggests new ideas about the nature of the great cloud of gases and dust from which the sun and planets were born...
Suddenly, a shrill alarm shatters the control room's silence. Red lights flash on the instrument panel. One of the reactor's steam condensers has lost its vacuum, causing a turbine "trip," or shutoff. No longer is the reactor able to shed heat produced by its radioactive core. Ominously its temperature climbs, threatening to boil away the coolant. Unless something is done fast, there may be a meltdown, spilling lethal radioactive gases...