Word: skittishly
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Geyer was only the most dramatic victim of a recession-induced advertising bust that has hit dailies across the U.S. Although circulation is holding steady, advertisers are skittish, and they normally account for about 70% of newspaper revenues. Hardly a major daily has escaped, from the normally ad-fat Los Angeles Times, where August's classified linage fell 17% below the same month last year, to the New York Times, the parent company of which reported last week that third-quarter profits from continuing operations fell 43.9%, in large part because of a 10.7% drop in ad linage. Says executive...
...skittish, demonstrative blond woman and the brooding, phlegmatic chestnut-haired man have much in common. Both grew up in Czechoslovakia, and both left. Navratilova, who defected in 1975, is a naturalized U.S. citizen; Lendl, who renounced his former homeland more subtly, soon will be. Both struggled to master English, and both now speak it fluently, with a dry, self- belittling wit. Both love all manner of sports: Lendl is a fiend for golf and hockey, while Navratilova is enchanted with skiing, basketball and, as a spectator, American football. Both rose to the top through raw physical power, and both have...
...trivia like junk mail and vacuum cleaners. And how contrite is the curmudgeonly commentator? "I'm furious about the race issue," he says. "As for homosexual insensitivity, I suspect I'm guilty." His reinstatement proved at least two things. Insensitivity to homosexuals is a pardonable offense, even at the skittish networks. And TV executives should think twice before tangling with a star...
While his rhetoric was forceful, Mandela signaled that he was a magnanimous and reasonable man with whom the government could talk. He went out of his way to make conciliatory gestures toward the skittish white community, asserting, "Whites are fellow South Africans, and we want them to feel safe." In Soweto he called unequivocally for "one person, one vote." But when asked whether the A.N.C. might be willing to ease that demand, he responded, "Compromises must be made in respect to every issue." Earlier, speaking directly to white fears and concerns, Mandela noted, "They insist on structural guarantees to ensure...
...reduce runaway system errors by a kind of "paranoid democracy," where modules working in parallel constantly evaluate whether their electronic co- workers are "sane" or "crazy." Unfortunately, as last week's breakdown showed, it is possible for all the modules to go crazy at once. Software, always the skittish part of any system, can also be made more dependable by imposing the kind of discipline on programmers that engineering standards impose on, say, bridge designers. A program like AT&T's faulty switching system, however, which can contain a million lines of code, is more complex than any bridge. "Standards...