Word: octopus
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...Music) D. In the trade, M.C.A. is known as "the octopus," but it keeps its tentacles well hidden. Its gross income is also a closely guarded secret, but estimates range as high as $100 million. Secrecy is an M.C.A. policy because the firm believes that publicity is for clients alone. To further their anonymity, M.C.A. agents dress as conservatively as bankers; the M.C.A. black suit is legend. And no one tries to dodge the public eye more than M.C.A.'s small, greying founder, board chairman and boss, Jules Caesar Stein...
Payoff. When new Treasury Minister Giuseppe Medici, 49, announced last year that the time had come to prune this octopus, Italians shrugged. But by last week the bearded Medici (who looks his name) could claim: "For the first time in Italy's modern history, the payrolls are going down instead of up." He has liquidated 50 bureaus (including one with 14,000 employees...
High-Voiced Helium. At 11 p.m., seven hours before the scheduled start of the flight, Kittinger got into his pressure suit ("feels like being loved by an octopus") and climbed into the gondola, a closed cylinder 3 ft. in diameter and 7 ft. tall. The lid was clamped shut, and the air inside was replaced by a helium-oxygen mixture. This was to denitrogenize Kittinger so that a sudden drop in pressure would not give him the bends by releasing bubbles of nitrogen in his blood. From this point on, his voice sounded somewhat squeaky; helium raises the pitch...
...slot machines, told where to lay bets or roll dice, and reported: "I have seen horse bets placed, and openly discussed, while a policeman sat drinking a cup of coffee almost within arm's reach of the bookie." Strickland's summation of Jefferson Parish: "A giant new octopus of organized gambling is flexing its tentacles for an even bigger grab. It is little short of being a gigantic casino...
Over the months Barbara had already received as many as three threatening, anonymous phone calls a week. But it was not until last month that a segregationist legislator named Jerry Sadler blasted the "octopus on the hill" (i.e., the university) for mixing "whites and blacks in an opera." Later another segregationist. Representative Joe Chapman, phoned the university's President Logan Wilson to discuss the matter. Though he denies threatening Wilson, the fact remained that the university's appropriations were about to come up before the legislature. Result: President Wilson suddenly decided that Dido must be white...