Word: spiel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Tuesday morning new Harvard employees follow handwritten signs through the corridors of Mem Hall to a secluded basement orientation room. There, anywhere from a handful to more than 40 people--mostly women--spend two hours guzzling coffee, watching a slide show about working for Harvard, and listening to a spiel on employees benefits. Dennis P. Nations, a counselor in the benefits section and a moderator of the orientation session, tells the group the fat information packets they are receiving will make great bedside reading...
...this euphoria is not the moon-gazing of laboratory visionaries, nor a spiel for still another arcane piece of audio equipment. Digital recordings do sound amazingly better, even in the hybrid form available today. Recording apparatus is beginning to be widely used, though hardware for full playback is not yet available outside the lab. Even heard on conventional equipment, the new hybrid records bring a full panorama of sound rushing from the speakers. In rock, digital is like scoring a studio seat next to the microphone. In classical, the sound is like a symphonic apotheosis. Floors vibrate; paint could crack...
...Jack Reardon began his own spiel on the majesty of Blodgett Pool and its King, Olympic medalist Bobby Hackett, my mind began to drift back to freshman year. It seemed hard to believe it had been four years since the Class of '79 first invaded Cambridge. We have changed and grown, but so have Harvard athletics, the question concerning both is--has that change been for the better...
...point. It's logical but not terribly convincing (especially considering that the whole spiel was an attempt to bum a quarter. "Just think--another quarter you won't have to own."). His preaching aside, people in these times still clamor to own just about everything they can possibly imagine. Cars, homes, Cuisinarts, video-cassette recorders--and if you can't afford it, then you simply buy it on credit, borrow money, get a loan, try our EZ Payment plan, Master Charge it, put it on the tab, Leo--anything. It seems the inevitable extension of the consumer...
They stake out selling space on the sidewalks of the world's most populous and profitable avenues. They do not advertise their wares. A simple litany suffices: "Check it out ... Why pay more? . . . Check it out." Fast-buck operators, masters of the quick hustle and the silver-tongued spiel, they are the street vendors of America, peddlers reincarnated from Dickensian England, catering to impulse buyers of every class and whim...