Word: powerless
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...high roaring down an alley of the factory complex alongside the city's namesake river. The blaze churned into an inferno that leapt explosively from building to building, incinerating one instantaneously and then--boom!--vaulting on to the next. In the end, some 1,000 fire fighters were powerless to stop it. Fueled by a variety of industrial-use chemicals stored in the structures, the fire consumed wooden flooring as though it were paper and blasted through brick walls, sweeping to residences in an adjacent neighborhood. By nightfall, said Police Lieut. Richard Wolak, the stricken area looked like "four blocks...
...being in his hands." Poussaint goes so far as to suggest that ultimately the victims may bring their fate upon themselves, subconsciously provoking the murder and making it a kind of willed suicide. Poussaint notes, as do many others, that the easy availability of handguns gives power to the powerless. What the Colt six- shooter was to the Wild West is what the "Saturday-night special" is to the ghetto: the great equalizer...
...sound is as pure and compelling as a siren song, and consumers seem powerless to resist. They have been snapping up compact disk players, which reproduce music with near perfection, at a rate that is overwhelming both retailers and manufacturers. Annual sales of the newest high-tech wonder, which came on the U.S. market in 1983, should reach 1 million next year. That will make the CD player the fastest-selling machine in home-electronics history. The videocassette recorder took six years (from 1975 to 1981) to reach the same milestone. "We're selling every single...
...both the Parent, who keeps trying to enforce ancient injunctions, and the fun-loving Child, who is the victim of the stern Parent. The man who says to himself "Now you've done it!" after making a mistake is using his Parent to reprimand his Child, who usually feels powerless and in the wrong...
...special flights date back to 1957, when U.S.-Polish relations were more amicable. But, said the Polish government announcement last week, "continuation of this particular privilege would be difficult in view of the discriminatory treatment our country receives daily from the U.S. & Administration." The U.S. is powerless to reciprocate beause Polish diplomats in Washington only have to go to their local A&P to do their food shopping. Said U.S. Embassy Spokesman Paul Smith: "We will manage to get by." The inconvenience will not last long: the embassy is arranging to have rations trucked in from West Germany...