Word: laser
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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People prone to forget their spouse's birthday can stay out of trouble with the $19.95 Laser Days datebook, which is custom-designed to remind them of as many as 20 important occasions. Marketed by Cleveland's Initial Concepts, the computer-printed calendar displays the customer's name on each page and gives a one-month advance notice of upcoming events...
Says M.I.T. Engineering and Computer Professor Jack Ruina: "I would compare it to going right from the kite stage to the 747." Years further off is the X-ray laser, which would be "bomb pumped," or powered by an internal nuclear explosion. Still more problematic are particle-beam weapons, which would fire streams of atomic particles...
...when the laser, or its high-tech cousins, seems able to protect one superpower against an ICBM strike, the tenuous equation will be upset. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviets could afford to let the other side become invulnerable; such a concession would be virtual surrender. Reagan said last spring that the U.S., if it did have space-based missile defenses, would never abuse the shield by launching an offensive first strike. But, concedes Major General John Storrie, an Air Force space official, "we walk a very narrow line in these matters between strategic defense and offense." The Soviets cannot...
...Some of those in the class have begun to experience the terrible complications associated with the condition. Jim, a diabetic for 20 of his 27 years, has begun to lose his eyesight and kidney function and has early signs of heart disease. Bob, 35, has had so much laser surgery to preserve his failing eyesight that he worries about losing his peripheral vision...
...Sandro Sequi, scenes are played in small, diorama-like boxes to emphasize the work's distant, legendary quality. The only serious dramatic defect is the sixth scene, the sermon to the birds, which was intended to be the high point. What was supposed to be a grand laser spectacle representing the flight of the birds in the shape of a cross is instead something more suitable to a light show in a down-at-the-heels disco...