Word: 747s
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Gore campaign manager William Daley, appearing at a rally of 75 Democratic Party lawyers, chanting and waving gloves in the air, calls President-quasi-elect Bush a "banana Republican." He vows to charter "a fleet of 747s" and fly the entire membership of the Trial Lawyers Association to Tallahassee...
...soldiers are targeted by enemy Scuds during the conflict, martial lightning bolts--actually oxygen-iodine lasers--will blow the missiles from the sky before they ever get close to their targets. The Air Force wants to outfit a fleet of 747s with lasers. These "Warbirds" could explode enemy missiles shortly after launch, well before they could unleash their batches of warheads on American soldiers or local civilians. Computers on the plane will bend the laser's "rubber mirror" hundreds of times a second to keep the beam fixed on the missile's skin for the three to five seconds needed...
They gave Cast Away's protagonist a job that symbolizes interconnected, high-tech society: he's a Federal Express efficiency expert. "We took this guy who is modern man to the nth degree," Hanks says, "whose life had been computers and 747s and packages, and reduced him to lapping water that he's collected in a rainstorm from a leaf." Hence, says Broyles, the two-word title: "He is cast away. He has to cast away all the elements of civilized life to survive...