Word: manual
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
During the campaign, the L.D.P. repeatedly demonstrated just how out of touch it had become. One L.D.P. legislator suggested that the consumption tax would be less painful if it were an even 4% instead of 3%. Another party member said farmers were only intelligent enough to do manual work. Credit for the greatest blunder, however, went to Agriculture Minister Hisao Horinouchi, who said, "It is wrong for women to come to the forefront of politics." Pausing just long enough to take one foot out of his mouth and insert the other, Horinouchi then attacked Doi, the popular Socialist leader. "British...
...touch the stuff. Nor is it very fond of novels. Theoretically, it could cope with some of Hemingway's short, simple sentences, though it could never make anything of long, convoluted passages from Faulkner. But give the Toshiba AS-TRANSAC computer a thoroughly dull, straightforward instruction manual, and it will earnestly chomp its way through page after page. What it does with those pages is the amazing part. The Toshiba machine has linguistic ability far beyond the powers of past generations of computers: it can translate, at least crudely, one language into another. In this case, the computer converts simple...
...Dagwood Bumstead types, the old-fashioned manual lawn mower was a suburban symbol of dread. Among modern-day gentry who want to get a little exercise and avoid fouling the neighborhood with noise and exhaust pollution, however, the motorless mower is making a quiet comeback. Sales of reel mowers by the American Lawn Mower Co. of Shelbyville, Ind., reached 100,000 last year, a 47% increase over 1986. Average price: less than $100, in contrast to $250 or more for motorized models...
...Today's manual mowers typically weigh about 20 lbs., less than half their clunky progenitors, thanks to lightweight alloy blades and polymer wheels. But for lawn connoisseurs, the manual mower's greatest advantage is its quality performance, claims Jim Hewitt, American Lawn Mower's vice president for marketing and sales. "A power mower can fragment the end of the grass like the split end of a hair," he explains. "A manual shears the lawn real smooth, like a crew...
Throughout his manual, O'Rourke maintains a tone of caustic irony. It fails to disguise a moralist concerned with a lapse of decorum and values. In a discussion of capital punishment, the condemned is told, "Try to think of something piquant to say on your way to the gas chamber. 'See you in hell, Mom,' is nice. Things like . . . 'Don't stop to mourn, organize' sound too stiff for what's basically an informal situation." It is at such times that the mask of the mockingbird slips off to reveal the owl beneath, hooting at a world he is furiously...