Word: static
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...home youth is led, through the ideas of his parents, to regard society as static and immovable. College exposes him to more liberal thought; but at the same time his teachers, failing to realize that in him is the power to interpret for society by sheer inspiration the sum of knowledge, speak uncompromising dogma. By indifferently tolerating the student's enthusiasm, they tend to make him doubt his own ideals. But still persisting, youth enters the world, the exhortations of commencement orators in his cars, only to find all doors closed. Deprived of his rightful command when in the prime...
Whatever the rating he gives him, there can be no doubt that his favorite musician is Jean Sibelius. He owns three radios and never misses a broadcast of his own compositions, tuning in inaccurately and listening intently to the resultant howling mixture of music and static. "You must be a good, very good musician to listen to radio," he says, "to get details...
...pilot, believed all was well and he was safe on his course up to the moment he flew full speed into the mountainside. The verdict: "It is the opinion of the Investigating Board that the probable cause of this accident was a combination of the following three factors: 1) Static conditions encountered in the last portion of the flight which rendered the reception of radio range signals unintelligible. 2) The continuation of the flight into mountainous country at an altitude below the higher mountains without the aid of ground visibility or radio signals to definitely identify position. 3) A change...
...huge in order to build up and handle the tremendous particle energies which they require for their work. In general they are of three kinds. The first, developed both in England and the U. S.., builds up high voltages by means of transformers and condensers. The second stores static electricity on balloon-sized electrodes until the potential is such that a mighty flow of direct current crosses the gap. For technical reasons, notably the difficulty of constructing a discharge tube which will handle the flow of high-voltage particles, the practical upper limit for these types is about...
...good third of The Song of the World is made up of descriptions of nature; but readers who automatically skip such passages may find their eyes arrested willy-nilly. Nature to Jean Giono is not a static stage-set but a legion of dynamic actors. His trees not only have their individual smells but their own voices; water is hard or soft like a hostile muscle or like friendly flesh; everything breathes and moves, lives and acts. Sample: "Flights of dead leaves were swept off by the rain. The woods were being stripped bare. Huge water-polished oaks emerged from...