Word: statics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Callers will hear a noticeable improvement in transmission quality, AT&T promises. The current undersea cables are often overcrowded and frequently suffer from static. And satellite connections, which now carry about 60% of transatlantic phone calls, typically produce an echoey sound and an annoying half-second delay because signals must be sent 22,300 miles up to a communications satellite and back down again. Fiber-optic technology, by contrast, delivers a comparatively pure sound. The ultrathin glass fibers in the cable carry information on laser beams of light, which travel with virtually no susceptibility to electronic interference. Long-distance telephone...
Meanwhile, as static conquest of the air, the skyscraper multiplied the site, extruding a patch of earth into a stack of pure property: the abstract, universal sign of capitalism. The standardization of its floors invoked the image of the machine, like the use of bodies as mechanical parts in Busby Berkeley's choreography or the precisely drilled production-line kicks of the Rockettes. Its soaring shafts, tapering setbacks and elaborate stacking (for this was the age of Rockefeller Center, not of the banal glass box) hinted at vastly oversized Mayan temples; the contrast between glittering surface and deep wells...
...organizations. No one has the right to pass judgement upon the merit of their membership in these organizations. The fact that at the present time it is considered both fun and politically correct to bash the final clubs is no excuse. The political and social climate here is not static, and what is popular today may be unpopular tomorrow. What is to prevent judgements based upon other controversial issues, such as religious beliefs or sexual orientation...
...high static over just one tape signals the intense level of competition that is coming soon to the video store near you -- or has already arrived. The number of outlets that rent or sell videocassettes has surged from as few as 10,000 in 1981 to more than 35,000 today. Everyone from car-wash operators to grocers to American Express has got into the act of dispensing tapes. The array of new outlets is bringing lower prices, wider selection and greater convenience for consumers, but it is also beginning to squeeze out many of the mom-and-pop operators...
...Ingmar Bergman. The American painter and the Swedish filmmaker are both stern visionaries whose art is based not on effusion but on reduction -- experience purified, like the flayed skin of a penitent. Both document man's spiritual solitude. Both listen for the eloquence in things left unsaid, the static electricity in gestures repressed. In their work you notice the flint first; you have to get closer to feel the fire...