Word: drags
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...back around Christmas, Drag Racer Don Garlits called a major tire company to ask if it could make him a tricycle-size front tire capable of running the quarter mile in 5.4 sec. at a top speed of, oh, 275 m.p.h. The tire company said it would have to get back to him. In July, maybe...
Answering questions like those--usually by strapping themselves into the cockpit and mashing the accelerator--is what the sport is all about for drag racers. Garlits, 54, is still miffed about a trick transmission he built that blew off half his right foot on just such a run in 1970. But it doesn't discourage him when misguided people tell him some new idea is crazy...
...stands at Gainesville was a fan, Bob Post, who has lately described Big Daddy in print as a "crafty empiric." (It was empiricism when Garlits, recovering in the hospital from his transmission troubles, concluded that drag racing would be safer, and also faster, if the engine were behind the driver rather than in front--a crazy idea that is now standard.) Post edits Technology and Culture and is also a curator at the Smithsonian Institution. The fine points of dragster design have moved him to write: "I have found no human artifact that pleases me more than an earthshaking, fire...
...matter? Their main function is to grow up into rich alumni but while in school they're too poor to contribute much. They take too much time from the professor's research, they're messy and demanding, and their credit ratings are still low. They simply act as a drag on the furthering of knowledge. If every student disappeared tomorrow, the University would not only survive, it could finally get some work done. Who knows--maybe the students could teach themselves, in their spare time...
...anticipated U.S. growth spurt may be delayed for several months while / the economy absorbs the oil-patch troubles. The beleaguered economies of Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, which account for 10% of total U.S. goods and services, are large enough to create a drag on the rest of the country. Major American oil companies have made billions of dollars in budget cutbacks, and that will at least temporarily offset the increased spending by other firms preparing for the good times ahead...