Word: dependability
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...security status; the Hoover Dam and the Mall of America shut down, and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and Mount Rushmore. It was as though someone had taken a huge brush and painted a bull's-eye around every place Americans gather, every icon we revere, every service we depend on, and vowed to take them out or shut them down, or force us to do it ourselves...
...terror of this loss goes way beyond writers, of course. It's just that writers depend on the ability to make connections out of thin air, or no air. The novelist Jean Stafford lived with the dread that she would be crippled by a stroke (she was). H.L. Mencken was a stroke victim who, at the end of his life, was unable to read or write. One of those who sat at his bedside and read to him was Manchester...
...course, unschooling lies at an extreme. Home-schooling families fall along a continuum between copying the traditional classroom and "learning" by building Mommy and Daddy a lovely cedar deck. The success of the venture may depend more on the parents than the kids. If they are like Marilyn and Gene McGinnis of Atlanta, devout Mennonites who nonetheless make a conscious effort to teach their children about other cultures and religions, home schooling can broaden and enrich children's minds as much as any schooling. Home schooling also works when parents are like the Deckers in Katy, Texas, parents of five...
...defense is inevitable, it may have painted itself into a corner by sticking so resolutely to its guns on the ABM treaty. Putin may find it difficult to relent on the treaty now that he's dug in his heels - although his strategy for maximizing diplomatic gains seems to depend on taking these standoffs right down to the wire. (Of course Russia achieves some moral high ground if it forces Bush's hand, because by withdrawing from the treaty that girds nuclear arms control, the U.S. would deepen European antipathy for an administration already considered alarmingly unilateralist by many...
...suck a lot of money from things they consider more important priorities - tanks, troops, ships, things they can move around on the battlefield. Guys in the Pentagon will talk about missile defense as pie-in-the-sky, but that won't really weigh on the bureaucratic outcome. That will depend primarily on the President, and whereas he kept out of the issue of remaking the military, leaving it to Secretary Rumsfeld, who ultimately punted, he's more likely to press hard for missile defense. And if he does, it will happen no matter what the military thinks...