Word: agrounder
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...watching Fuchida said to himself as he saw the slow-moving Nevada. At his signal, all available bombers attacked in an effort to sink it and block the channel to the sea. Bombs ignited huge fires in the ship's bow. It escaped total destruction only by deliberately running aground...
Clinging resolutely to the strategies of the past, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had recently sent to Singapore one of Britain's newest and biggest battleships, the 35,000-ton H.M.S. Prince of Wales, with the battle cruiser Repulse and the new carrier Indomitable. But the Indomitable ran aground off Jamaica, so when Admiral Sir Tom Phillips proudly set forth from Singapore to break up the Japanese invasion to the north, he scoffed at the critical need for air support, following his antiquated conviction that "bombers were no match for battleships...
This is ranting excess of the finest quality, and a case could be made that its author is the most gifted and prodigious humorist the U.S. has heard from since the old steamboat pilot ran aground. Prophetic stuff too. One doubter, + foreseeing the twilight of radio, broods that "they will invent something. It'll have the same effect as bourbon but it won't give you headaches or upset the stomach, so it'll be used even by the kiddos. It'll earn gazillions. And boys, they are not going to deal us in on that hand." What Keillor...
...much the way that Uzis are safer only for the people holding them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn't count the number of lungs damaged by ozone from automobile exhaust. The birds and seals suffering and dying along whatever pristine coast an oil tanker chooses to run aground on don't make the tally. But they are traffic victims, as surely as are pedestrians run over in a crosswalk...
Some Nicaraguans expect the new government to banish poverty by decree. They will be disillusioned by the time and exertion required to refloat an economy that has run aground. And Chamorro will not perform without error. She considers her mission divine but suffers from high-handedness and an aversion to criticism, no matter how well intentioned. Irritated by endless comparisons with Philippine President Corazon Aquino, another widow of a national hero, she has developed a response both disarming and revealing: "I would rather be thought of as a Latin Margaret Thatcher...