Word: lighter
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...leans into the wind on a bridge over the Saone while Antoine indulges in a tirade against authority. Antoine can't believe that Bernard landed a 20-year sentence for having the instincts of an honest man when a sleazy crime of passion would have earned him a much lighter punishment. Descombes listens in silence, then softly repeats, "Twenty years. My God!" His stolid expression crumples feature by feature and he begins to weep. And this, more than Antoine's polemics, is what moves us: just a homely middle-aged man who looks even homelier when he cries...
...unpredictable. Especially in the new model year about to begin. For 1977, GM is putting on an amazing shrinking act: over the past two weeks, it has unveiled a gallery of standard-size cars that on the average are nearly a foot shorter and 700 lbs. lighter than their 1976 counterparts. Ford and Chrysler by contrast are making only minor changes, and ailing American Motors is actually making its glassy Pacer longer...
Electronic Gizmo. The most obvious step was to make cars shorter and lighter. Trimmer cars can be driven by smaller engines that drink less gas per mile. Technology was also refined. Emission-control devices, always the enemies of fuel economy, were built in, not slapped on, making for more efficient engines. Ignitions were more precisely tuned. GM's Delco-Remy division developed an electronic gizmo called MISAR, which monitors driving conditions and adjusts ignition-spark timing for optimal performance (for now, only the Oldsmobile Toronado sports the device at GM, although Chrysler has installed a similar device on several...
...Force Academy, which have also just admitted their first women, West Point is determined to treat men and women identically. But there are a few exceptions at the Point: women will learn karate instead of boxing and wrestling, and they will carry M-16 rifles, which are 2 Ibs. lighter than...
Even as a young man, Washington was noted for his stately manner (Virginia's new Governor Patrick Henry once praised his "solid information and sound judgment"), but he sometimes showed a lighter side with ladies. A "chatty, agreeable companion," one of them wrote to a friend, "he can be downright impudent sometimes, such impudence ... as you and I like." After a certain amount of impudence among notables like the Fairfaxes, his patrons, the young war veteran settled down with the widowed Martha Custis, then 27 (two children by her first marriage, none by her second). Said Washington: "With...