Word: modularity
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...useful. In the daily battlefield of misunderstandings and impatient busyness, such locutions as Don't go there, In your dreams and What part of no don't you understand? are Nerf-like weaponry: When you're blind with anger or exasperation, you grab the nearest item of modular meanness. Of course, not all coolster coinages are overtly fightin' words. Indeed, some affect affectlessness: Same old, same old; Blah blah blah; Yadda yadda yadda. But given the right nuances, indifference can pack a wallop: Yadda will outsnide blah, for instance but wither before the passive-aggressive champ (and Bob Dole favorite...
Even if these phrases were the nastiest bomb mots on earth, who'd want a civilization without frequent hits of wicked wit? The real reason modular meanness grates isn't the meanness--it's the modularness...
...buzz BILL HOWARD, PC Magazine: "IBM has added a lot of flexibility to the ThinkPad 760. It has the best pointing device, the screen is among the best for its size and vivid color, and there's a modular bay for putting in a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive or a second floppy...
Once start-up costs were absorbed for remodeling school basements or buying modular units, the preschool and afterschool day care became mostly self-supporting: 85% of the $2 million program comes from parents' fees. "Schools should be a community hub," says fourth-grade teacher Darlene Shaw. In three decades at Sycamore Hills, she has witnessed profound change. "Out of my 23 students today, only one has a stay-at-home mom," she said. "Without consistent, quality day care, kids flounder. And for kids dealing with divorce and single-parent families, school is their stability when things are going crazy...
...report to the seminar center, a big white concrete-origami structure with skylights and indoor trees and maple floors and modular furniture in primary colors, and you sit in a circle of potato employees with loose-leaf notebooks on their laps (Tools for Transformation), listening to a young facilitator named Terri explain how TQO works. She is friendly in a robotic way, as if she had taken one of those personal-development courses where they train you to look the other person in the eye when you speak to him and always say his name...