Word: virtual
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...presidential contest is really a set of 50 simultaneous state elections. And the grand prize goes to the candidate who can put together victories in the right combination of states to win the magic 270 electoral votes. In recent years, that has been easy for Republicans, given their virtual lock on the electoral votes of the South and West. But this year Michael Dukakis and George Bush start from a near standoff in the number of electoral votes represented by states solidly for them or leaning their way. So the election seems likely to be won (or lost...
Boston drivers, a notoriously freewheeling breed, find their ultimate frustration on the city's Central Artery. Twice each weekday, for a total of seven hours, it becomes a virtual parking lot. The highway, a six-lane stretch of Interstate 93 that snakes through Boston's downtown section from the Massachusetts Turnpike to the Charles River, handles 180,000 automobiles a day -- nearly 2 1/2 times its stated capacity. The two-mile elevated section, built without any shoulders or slowdown and speedup lanes for exits and entrances, has an accident rate that is twice the average for urban highways...
...Wapner of TV's People's Court, which is in effect a televised private proceeding. But the system has spread. Judicate, a Philadelphia-based network of some 450 judges, has handled nearly 800 cases this year in 34 states. In some of the states where hired judges can conduct virtual trials, the verdicts can also be reviewed by the regular appeals courts...
...absence of a strong class of businessmen or a highly organized church -- both of which existed in the Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos was deposed -- the party and the 163,000-troop Burmese army it controls have a virtual monopoly on political power. The likelihood is that any new leadership will be drawn from the military. If the army engineers a coup, chances are that the move will be led by younger officers, men in their late 40s who are unlikely to take a favorable view of the party's policies. Explains Kiryu: "Those in their 60s and older, who experienced...
During the Cultural Revolution, the 10-year period when Mao Zedong made war on the intellectuals and reduced the country to a virtual standstill, Paul was forced to leave school and was sent to the country for two years. There he worked from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m. in the rice fields, receiving little or no wages and barely enough food for subsistence. His education was put on hold, and he was forced to concentrate on survival--his classmates in the city, members of the Red Guard, had labeled him a "reactionary," the gravest crime in Mao's China...