Word: latches
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that can be easily copied, guests receive a thin paper card containing a metal foil strip with a precise pattern of holes punched in it by a computer. When someone inserts the card into a small box on his room door, a battery-powered electric motor opens the latch. When a customer checks out of the hotel or reports his card missing, the computer changes his room combination. The electronic watchdog has a total of 4 billion constantly changing combinations. Managers at hotels using computer keys say that the system has virtually eliminated larceny...
...until months afterward that the huge relief effort for Europe was dated to June 1947). Solzhenitsyn's controversial depiction of the decline of the West in 1978 drew vast attention. Though the buildup for the speaker sometimes exceeds the impact of the speech itself, the point is to latch on to some speaker who will, for a day, reflect the status and spectacle commensurate with Harvard University's biggest annual afternoon...
...Duffy. "When you see a downturn," he says, "people are more inclined to go out to a movie, and usually alcohol consumption goes up. People are interested in getting away from the problems of the world so we've tried to create a happy atmosphere." Hollywood could even latch onto the trend with a new genre of happy-hour movies in which hero and heroine do almost nothing else but celebrate days of wine and Four Roses...
...that put Carl Bernstein in the newsroom of the Washington Post a few hours after the police found a strange collection of characters at the Watergate. (Actually, Watergate was a regular soap opera of the fortuitous: if one of the burglars had not stupidly left tape over the latch of a rear door, the night watchman might never have discovered the caper and Congress might never have investigated and the White House tape system might never have been revealed and Richard Nixon might never have resigned.) Luck was the invisible hand that prompted Skylab to scatter its debris over Western...
Goodfield was fortunate to latch onto an exceptional lab at a productive time. But she depends too much on the flow of experiments, the blow-by-blow description of discovery to keep her book moving. There are no add personalities that stand out. no irreverant wits. Perhaps Brito's preference for "having quiet technicians and completely bland people around" really is wonderful. ("They don't notice anything wrong...They keep us all sane," Brito claims.) But this lack of funny incident, of weird quirks is what separates the book from other inside tours of biology, such as Horace Judson...