Word: system
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hand-held video device called Game Boy for Christmas, better act fast. Nintendo, the Japanese manufacturer of this year's hottest toy, expects to produce 1 million Game Boys for sale in the U.S. this season -- but that will meet only half the estimated demand. A portable video-game system that is controlled by a microprocessor chip, Game Boy uses interchangeable cartridges, and it offers stereo sound...
Gorbachev is clearly motivated by his nation's desperate internal situation. Perestroika, which aims to radically restructure the Soviet economy, has so far succeeded only in disrupting the clanky old centralized-state system that at least belched forth a few second-rate consumer goods for the store shelves. Now those shelves are barer than they have been for 20 years, there are rumors of looming food riots this winter, and Gorbachev is not the hero at home that he is abroad. It is no wonder, then, that the Soviets, as former U.S. arms negotiator Paul Nitze says, "have turned inward...
...aging English butler looks back on his decades of service in a stately house. The meaning of his memories is not always clear to him, but it is to the reader, thanks to Japanese-born novelist Ishiguro's deadly, deadpan dissection of the British class system...
...stiff prison term once again drew attention to the glaring inequalities that often characterize sentencing decisions in the U.S. Despite efforts at reform, much of the nation's criminal sentencing system is still based on an idiosyncratic set of decisions made by crime-busting legislatures and individual trial judges. New York State law, for example, sets extremely broad parameters for various crimes -- one to 25 years for a bank robbery, 1 1/2 to 15 years for first-degree assault -- but leaves it to the discretion of each judge to fix the actual sentence. The theory behind this system is that...
...more venerable than radar. The seemingly magical technology that enables planes, ships and artillery units to spot the enemy from afar has made the difference between defeat and victory in many a battle. In a Nova TV episode called Echoes of War, which was shown on the Public Broadcasting System last week, radar was hailed as the military's unsung hero of World War II. As physicist I.I. Rabi once recalled, "Maybe we could have won it without the atomic bomb . . . but without radar we could have lost...