Word: drilling
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...magpie. At times, the palms of my hands actually itched with temptation and desire." He encounters a woman with bound feet, a waiter whose tongue was cut out by the Japanese as a punishment, a dentist whose recollections of wartime internment are so gruesome that Booth endures the drill without novocaine or complaint. He learns how to eat boiled beetles, chew sugarcane stalks, polish ancestral bones on "hungry ghosts" day, and speak rudimentary Cantonese. He spends long afternoons wandering around what was then a quiet city of green hills and mysterious alleys, catching geckos and digging up spent bullets...
...easy task. In winter, the shallow waters of this part of the Caspian turn into ice floes that - carried by high winds - can crush conventional offshore rigs. So Agip, the operating arm of Italy's ENI charged with developing the field, built concrete-and-steel islands from which to drill. Even more daunting, Kashagan oil lies below the spawning grounds of the Caspian's beluga sturgeon, the sole source of world-renowned beluga caviar. So Agip is making sure no waste material from its drilling is discharged into the Caspian Sea, and has employed a technology for recycling waste water...
...marshals, the armed, plainclothes agents who patrol the skies. In this case, the bullets were made of paint; the terrorists and passengers were actors. And I was standing in as a federal air marshal in training--the first journalist ever allowed into the program's secure facility to drill alongside recruits...
...command post. On the great Plexiglas map, from six to a dozen unknown aircraft are being plotted at almost any time; as one is identified by the scrambling fighters, another is reported elsewhere ... In case of a suspected attack, the hot lines would carry a call which is no drill: Air Defense Readiness. At the signal, all military aircraft are to be armed, fueled and manned, all defense forces called to duty, the White House and top officials notified--but not the public. Next signal, when the incoming aircraft prove "manifestly hostile in intent": Yellow Alert...
Even longtime veterans got into the act. In a corner of the huge maintenance complex in Tulsa, Ralph Dwain Garrison and Jack (Robin) Hood schemed to save drill bits costing as much as $200 each that were routinely being tossed after a few uses. Garrison took the motor from his son's science project and slapped on a vacuum-cleaner belt to create "Thumpin' Ralph"--a machine to sharpen old drill bits for reuse. Savings? Over $300,000. "The old mind-set--unions vs. management--it's still there for about 10% of the people," says machinist Jim Messick...