Word: sleekly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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They present a sitcom study in contrasts, a political Odd Couple. He is cool; she is warm. He counts their pennies; she spends their dollars. She favors sleek high heels; he wears clunky wing tips. (One of her cardinal campaign rules is not to unpack in front of her husband, lest he see some new purchase.) His desk is as clean as a putting green; hers resembles a rummage sale of old papers. He is guarded; she is winningly open. She loves to gossip; for him, small talk is a foreign language. He is Greek Orthodox; she is Jewish...
...most powerful supercomputers are surprisingly small and sleek, some not much bigger than a California hot tub. But looks can be deceiving. Supercomputers often squeeze out the last bit of processing speed by shrinking the distances electrons have to travel within their wiring. They are tightly packed workhorses that require a whole array of supporting equipment. Some employ full-size mainframe computers just to shuttle programs in and out of their processing units. The machines may be connected, by cable or satellite, to hundreds of remote terminals that can transform raw numerical output into stunning 3-D graphics. They often...
When the first Pontiac Fiero hit the streets in 1983, automobile buffs waxed ecstatic. The two-door coupe had the sleek lines of a sports car, and its original base price of $7,990 made it comely even to cash-conscious commuters, who did not mind that it had only two seats. A molded plastic exterior and an engine placed just behind those seats to improve handling gave the auto a justifiable reputation for innovative design. But last week parent company General Motors, citing decelerating sales, suddenly slammed the brakes on all future production of the Fiero (the Italian word...
...turns. The whole structure can pirouette 360 degrees, enormously simplifying the aiming of the instrument. It is probably the world's only building with snowplow blades on its corners to clear a path as it rotates about a circular track. When its doors open, they reveal not a sleek, tubular telescope, but a six-eyed monster, a hexagonal array of half a dozen 72-inch mirrors, the sum of whose images equals the capacity of a single mirror 176 inches across...
...best, it recalls the anguished intensity of vintage Bergman. At its worst, with its English-speaking actors sporting Middle European accents, it reminds one of De Duva, a parody of Bergman films in which Death (speaking in Borscht Belt Swedish) gets dumped on by a symbolic dove. Sleek and lubricious, elliptical and dead serious, Lightness dares to be laughed at. It surely demands to be admired...