Word: base
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Lots of sportswear companies base their image on the classic all-American look (think Ralph Lauren and J. Crew), but only Brooks Brothers has the heritage to back up that blue-blooded claim. The firm's first store, then known as H. & D.H. Brooks & Co., was opened by Henry Sands Brooks in New York City 188 years ago. The retailer quickly became the place to go for off-the-rack suits, an early version of ready-to-wear. In 1850, when Brooks' sons took over the family business, they changed the name to Brooks Brothers, with the Golden Fleece...
Oddly, there wasn't much measuring involved besides the basic sleeve and collar. That's because the tailors in Pink's Ireland shop start with their regular retail-base model and then build out with the customized choices. It's like Pimp My Shirt. But since I was interested in finding someone to make a garment that hugged my contours as well as satisfied my whims, I headed to Seize sur Vingt, a small men's boutique that promised to make me a shirt from scratch...
...There are other, trickier challenges that would have to be overcome. Part of the justification for a lunar base has always been that the moon is rich in helium-3, an isotope of common helium that could serve as fuel in eventual fusion reactors. Astronauts could, in theory, mine the stuff and ship it back to Earth. That's fine, but first we have to, well, invent the reactor. What's more, as the beleaguered crews aboard the International Space Station have discovered, sometimes just maintaining your ship can take all your time and the mission itself - scientific research, mining...
...Then, of course, there's money. NASA's budget is currently about $17 billion a year, with no increase in sight. The agency insists that's sufficient to build the base, a claim that should become easier to believe after 2010, when the shuttles are mothballed and the space station is done and we quit throwing money into two programs that have long been revenue sinks. The agency hopes to woo international partners too, but after the bust of the space station - a U.S.-led but multi-national progra - it may not be so easy to make the sale...
...Bush will, indeed, leave office before Chavez. And the Venezuelan president likes to remind audiences that Bill Clinton was a man he respected. So, if the White House reverts to the Democrats in 2008, Chavez may have more trouble rousing his base with anti-U.S. rhetoric...