Word: prop
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most promising research is retrogressive. United Technologies is developing a "prop fan"-an eight-blade propeller driven by a jet engine. The blades look like warped boomerangs. They are more efficient for subsonic aircraft than the fanjet engines planned for the 1980s; on flights of up to 1,500 miles, the prop fan would be 40% more fuel economical, since a propeller is more efficient than jet thrust during climb-outs and letdowns. Even so, the boomerang has a problem: excessive noise. Furthermore, how can airlines lure passengers back to a prop after they have flown...
There are also plans to set up a new European monetary fund, which would make loans to weaker members of the system that needed to finance deficits or prop up their currencies to ECU levels. How much each nation would contribute to the common fund is still being discussed, but the West Germans would supply the major share...
...Neto wanted the Katangese to invade Zaïre when they did. Both leaders knew that a second invasion of Zaïre from Angolan bases would raise charges that Havana and Luanda were abetting the violation of international borders and might also provoke a Western intervention to prop up Mobutu. Both those fears came true. Neto may be bolting the border after the Katangese have already got out, but at least, he hopes, this time the exiles will stay at home for a while...
Illuminations contained pieces on Kafka, Baudelaire, Proust, Brecht and the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In it Benjamin related the development of 20th century mass movements and the mechanical means of mass art. Consider his observations on the film actor as a manipulated prop: "Let us assume," he wrote, "that an actor is supposed to be startled by a knock at the door. If his reaction is not satisfactory, the director can resort to an expedient: when the actor happens to be at the studio again he has a shot fired behind him without...
...sense the cold stares that follow your back across the lobby, and head out into the street to look for a cab. There are none, of course--South Jamaica, despite the presence of the railroad station, is not a smart place to cruise around looking for fares--so you prop yourself, more than a bit self-consciously, against the wall of the Rip-Off Bar and Grille, and wait...