Word: exacting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Assessing the impact of the spending cuts is made vastly more difficult because of another major departure: the lumping of three dozen-odd education, social-service and community-aid programs (the exact number will have to be fixed by House-Senate conference) into four "block grants" that states can, within broad limits, distribute any way they see fit. The move primarily is a step toward Reagan's philosophical goal of lessening Washington's clout in American society. But it is supposed to save money too; less will be allotted to the block grants than would have been spent...
...strokes of the finest brain surgeon. During a grueling four-year apprenticeship in vocational classrooms and on the shop floor, the toolmaker absorbs the principles of solid geometry and learns to think in three dimensions. He is expected to read labyrinthine blueprints as well as be aware of the exact levels of heat and pressure that will cause various metals to buckle and break...
...winter of 1979, the Israelis began to assemble a "combat file" on the proposed reactor site at El-Tuwaitha. Using the engineering blueprints, Israeli experts pinpointed the exact location of the reactor core within its sheltering cupola. They also measured the size and strength of the cupola and the precise location of a computer installation that would eventually control the reactor's operation. In June 1980, the armed forces asked Prime Minister Begin to authorize a clandestine, infrared survey of the site at El-Tuwaitha. Before the mission, Begin was given an aerial photograph of the area...
...flight plan, exact details of which remain secret, skirted the southern tip of Jordan, then proceeded northeast across the top of Saudi Arabia. From time to time the jets would flash over a reference point, and the group leader would radio a code message ("sand dune yellow") to the war room in Tel Aviv's Defense Ministry building. The warplanes remained well beyond the range of U.S.-operated AWACS radar aircraft currently assigned to the Saudis and patroling the country's Persian Gulf perimeter. The job of the one AWACS that was airborne at the time was solely to survey...
...process has quietly hummed through the fall, winter and spring, and finally spit out a speaker. How did it work in 1980-81? A little differently from most years because of the presidential intervention, but it's ad hoc in any case. "I don't think there's an exact science," Henry G. Van der Eb '42, who as president of the AHA had a major say in the selection, says. "It's an evolving, rolling process." While primary responsibility rests with the AHA, the informal consultating process and the tentative feelers that are extended to potential speakers...