Word: linearities
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...roots of this materialism seem to lie in Western society's tendency to place value in linear progress--the further away you get from your starting point, the better you have done. This culture's predominant ethic dictates that the acquisition of "more"--more money, more material goods, more power than others have--is the only acceptable goal of life. The now-famous saying, "The one who dies with the most possessions, wins," reflects the concept that tangible wealth is the standard on which success should be measured...
...Extremely sexually active people in urban settings form a relatively closed group. We can expect that all the partners of those AIDS carriers in the study are just as sexually active. It's easy math to figure out that the risk of transmission follows a geometrical, and not a linear progression in this subpopulation. The number of people an individual has had sex with "by extension" grows by leaps and bounds if the partners are also at high risk. The second conclusion we can reach is that sexual contacts, and thus the disease, will remain relatively confined within the subpopulation...
...basic problem, according to City Manager Robert W. Healy, is Cambridge's high auto density. "Well, you're looking at a city with more linear miles of automobiles than street," Healy says. "There is no simple solution...
Obviously, the printed page, the linear medium, divorces information from time: one can go back and reread and think more and read again, because the words are frozen upon the page and therefore have a sort of timeless status. TV rushes headlong through real time, and given the constrictions of schedule, it is often a second-rate instrument with which to pursue the truth. The written word can commit the profoundest treacheries with the truth, but the hope of writing is at least to preserve the active integrity of the brain that is receiving the words. Television, flowing into...
...formula that served him so well in The Hunt for Red October (1984) and Red Storm Rising (1986): describe enough hardware and any plot can seem plausible. Clancy occasionally hits his old stride ("Pellets fired from a shotgun disperse radially at a rate of one inch per yard of linear travel"), but this time out he concentrates on his human characters, a subject apparently beyond the range of his research. Patriot Games is a minefield of unintended comedy. When, for instance, the Princess announces that she is two months pregnant, Ryan knows just what the etiquette of the situation demands...