Word: layers
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...season was near perfect. After the thaw there were dry, mild days so the farmers could plant almost without interruption, most of them using the no-till method, where the seeds were drilled or chiseled into matted stubble left from the year before; this residue forms a weed-retardant layer and a sponge for moisture. The right rains came at the right time. Only in isolated corners of the country were there scorching winds or floods...
AMERICAN SCHOOLS DO NOT TURN ON A dime. Yes, they are buffeted regularly by the passing winds of reform (as any teacher will attest). Those breezes usually leave behind another layer of managers in the central office, another mandatory service to be provided to the needy few, another couple of hundred pages of education code telling teachers what they should do and when. But the basic structure remains the same. It is a structure forged in the early industrial age: the school as factory turning out regulation graduates, with teachers as laborers, principals as foremen, and supervisors as, well, supervisors...
Each link in the financial-services food chain may make sense, but the whole chain raises two questions. First, are we weakening the signals on which the invisible hand of capitalism relies? How many layers of decision makers are there between my decision to save a dollar and someone else's decision to put that dollar to practical use? Each layer is like a relay station along an old, predigital telephone line: it propels the message but also slightly distorts it. Cumulatively, the small distortions can add up to a lot of noise in the system...
Cohn chose to limit her study of black to prints because she believes the intensity of "blackness" in a carbon or intaglio print is substantially different from the more fragile writing inks and watercolor pigments. Also because prints are made from a single layer of black and tend to form an opaque, continuous surface, they project a constancy and immutability not found in drawing or painting...
...University yesterday added another layer of protection to a central administration which spent much of the spring plagued by reports of disarray and inefficiency...