Word: speeder
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...steers you between chapters; the stick shift takes you to the next book. Before you know it, your brain has become some kind of jet-powered Maserati. Reading regular text, you're considered fleet of eye if you hit 400 words a minute; on this device, known as the Speeder Reader, test subjects have been known to manage 2,000 words a minute...
Which doesn't mean we're all going to spend the 21st century treating books like NASCAR racetracks. But as an effective tool for cramming large chunks of information (the technology it is based on is already a big hit with law students), Speeder Reader is proof positive that we also don't have to treat books like slabs of paper that sit on shelves anymore. Printed text, which has remained basically unchanged since Gutenberg first got his fingers inky, is about to bloom into a thousand different forms. The one you use will increasingly depend on what you need...
ARMORED ATTACK TANKS (AATs) These lumbering Trade Federation land ships are not exactly speeder bikes, but their heavily armored noses are strong enough to smash through walls...
...opportunity to rework the film has maybe soothed some of that old pain. Outdated special-effects shots have been tidied up. (Lucas complains in particular about a "fuzzy Vaseline blob" beneath Luke Skywalker's land speeder.) Computer-generated creatures (Rontos and Jawas and such) were added to the backgrounds of previously static scenes. Extra spaceships with keener moves now flesh out some of the climactic battle scenes. A scene has been restored between Han Solo and the reptilian loan shark Jabba the Hutt that was discarded when Lucas couldn't figure out a satisfactory way to concoct Jabba (he finally...
...Congress, he was actually getting out to save his neck. The $100,000 deal involving one of Michael Milken's junk bonds promised to be every bit as serious as Wright's transgressions. And the investigations have the same salutary effect as the state trooper's pulling over a speeder: everyone slows down for a while...