Word: availing
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...quickly to get to Emerson 105 for his 10 a.m. lecture. He takes out a frying pan and two eggs. He cannot, however, figure out how to turn on the stove. He flicks the garbage disposal on and off, and turns the dishwasher dials around, but to no avail. Finally, he yells, "Honey, how the hell does the stove work," and gets his wife out of bed to fix him breakfast...
Professor Harvardicus returns home after spending the rest of the day at the Faculty Club. When he arrives home, he opens the door and sets off the burglar alarm. He tries slamming the door and turning the porch lights on and off quickly, but to no avail. Finally, he screams, "Honey, how the hell do you work the burglar alarm," and his wife, roused by the noise, comes over and fixes...
...years. One of Reagan's favorite tales involves the crew of a B-17 hit during World War II. After the crew bailed out, as Reagan tells it, the pilot turned to a gunner too wounded to move. The gunner implored the pilot to save himself but to no avail. "Never mind, son," the pilot says. "We'll ride it down together." Reagan tells this story to exemplify the difference between Americans and Russians. Okay. But if the two pilots were alone in the plane and went down together, how does anyone know their final words to one another...
...Meiman, 75, a mathematician and close friend of Sakharov's, has repeatedly been denied permission to leave the country on the grounds that he was engaged in classified work in the 1950s. After his wife's death in Washington last week, U.S. officials urged the Soviet Union, to no avail, to allow Meiman to attend her funeral and then join his daughter, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Boulder...
Ghorbanifar's value went far beyond negotiating a hostage swap. So say several CIA sources and, not surprisingly, Ghorbanifar as well. Insists one operative: "For years we had tried to recruit, to no avail, a simple Islamic revolutionary guard. Nobody in Iran wanted to touch the U.S., especially the CIA. Then this guy ((Ghorbanifar)) comes in and delivers for discussions practically anyone...