Word: plastic
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...pounds of trash. Most goes to dumps and landfill projects, which gobble up land, or to incinerators, which can pollute the air. But now refuse is being reappraised as a possible Cinderella fuel. Cheap and almost limitless, as municipalities know only too well, it consists mainly of paper, plastic and organic matter that when burned, releases about 50% of the heat value of coal...
...metal hands since the 16th century. Boston Silversmith Paul Revere was well known for the quality of the false teeth he fashioned long before his midnight message to Massachusetts' minutemen. But today's many and various replacements, made of such space-age materials as Teflon, the nonstick plastic, and pyrolytic carbon, a diamond-hard substance, are far more sophisticated. Unlike earlier devices, which were worn outside the body and usually removed at night, they are true replacements, designed to be implanted permanently and to duplicate, if not actually improve upon nature. Some examples...
...influence even in the architecture. Calendars with the Pope's picture hold sacred positions next to the children's photos on top of the television. Sewing machines work manually, though electricity is available. Instant coffee sits on top of a wood-burning stove. Battered wooden rockers sway next to plastic kitchen chairs. Telephone wires stretch above glassless windows. Near the electricity meter the old fashioned stove-pipe vent perches like...
...Complications. Sometimes the problem to be overcome by barter is not simply shortages, but time. Recently Jim Caulfield, purchaser for an Illinois division of Wheaton Industries, needed a petrochemical-based plastic resin that is in short supply because of the energy crisis. His normal supplier could not deliver in less than four months, and waiting that long would cost Wheaton a potential contract. Caulfield knew someone who had a silo full of the resin, and made a deal to borrow 40,000 Ibs. -which he will repay by turning over the resin that his normal supplier eventually delivers...
...until he bleeds. Next day the cadaver turns up in the bedroom of ex-Singer Dotty Moore, at whose party he was mysteriously murdered. A good deal of esprit de corpse ensues until the poor chap is lugged away by his fellow Jumpers in a huge plastic bag. The deceased in fact is a professor of logic named McFee. Like McFee, all the Jumpers are professors of philosophy at the college where Dotty's husband teaches. They have been organized as gymnasts by the vice chancellor of the college, an unscrupulous bounder, lecher and pragmatist called Sir Archibald Jumper...