Word: quartz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...prepared for the unexpected if you leave the beaten track or the pilgrims' paths. This is a part of the world where having more than one husband is usual, sheepdogs wear protective tin ruffs to save them from leopards, and paths are often made of silver and gold quartz. And in these strange lands, foreigners are definitely exotic. Unlike Nepal where trekking is a developed industry and walking routes are lined with tea shops selling apple strudel and Swiss r?sti?one of my companions actually claimed to have gained weight on one trip?a short walk in the Indian Himalayas...
...precise-looking 48-year-old with close-cropped white hair and a neatly-trimmed goatee, Antoniotti did his own apprenticeship here in the 1960s and lived through the lean years of the '70s and '80s, when cheap quartz watches from the Far East decimated the Swiss industry's traditional market. "If I'd had kids back then, I'd never have advised them to go into this business," he says. But today that trend has been thrown into reverse as watch manufacturers scramble to make up for two decades when recruiting was nonexistent...
...Over in the corner, Tobias Schenkel is wrestling with the intricacies of an early 19th century pocket watch: on its blue enamel face, two angels strike the hours with tiny hammers. In this age of oscillating quartz crystals and digital technology, Tobias concedes that there's something absurd about his chosen profession. But for this 25-year-old, that's the whole point. "Watchmaking is like an island in the modern era," he explains. "Amid all these new technologies, it's one old technology that's exactly the same today as it was 100 years...
...Coaxial cable (1929) --Quartz clock (1930) --Transistor (1947) --Solar cell (1954) --Laser (1958) --Touch-Tone service...
...Even Oliver Stone, who has a minor genius for mischievous dark cartooning (as in his contemptible movie "JFK," with its hallucinations of kitchen-sink conspiracy), treated Nixon as a complex and in some ways sympathetic figure. H.R. Haldeman had it about right when he compared Nixon to "a multifaceted quartz crystal. Some facets bright and shining, others dark and mysterious. And all of them constantly changing as the external light rays strike the crystal...some smooth and polished, others crude, rough, and sharp...