Word: familiar
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...next time you're doodling during a meeting - or twirling a pencil or checking the underside of the table for gum - and you hear that familiar admonition ("Are we bothering you?"), you can tell the boss with confidence that you've been paying attention to every word...
...Line on the Horizon starts well. "I know a girl," Bono screams on the title track, thrusting us into the familiar cosmos of a U2 hit. There's the martial beat, the fickle female object of desire, the soaring inarticulateness - "Ohhhhhh/ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh" - followed by the Edge chugga-chugga-chugging away on his guitar, chasing Bono up the scale note for note and yawp for yawp. It makes you giggle in amazement that the same old tricks keep generating new thrills...
...surprisingly, the album lacks a unified feel. On a few tracks, the Edge, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton sound at home rumbling through the verses and blowing out the choruses in the old familiar way. But as No Line trudges on, it slumps under the weight of its own need to surprise. Eno invented the bleeps and whirs that are mixed into the background of so many rock albums, and used as seasoning, his effects still have the power to create mystery. (On the title track, it sounds as if Bono is duetting with a quasar - very...
When her ties to Condit emerged, the familiar twist - the fresh-faced intern besotted with an older Washington power-broker - transfixed the country. As police combed Rock Creek Park in Northwest Washington for signs of the missing woman, tips rushed in: Levy was buried in Virginia, or at the bottom of the Potomac, or had become pregnant and fled. Not until the attacks of Sept. 11 did the media spotlight trained on the case begin to flicker. Finally, on May 22, 2002, a man walking his dog in a Rock Creek Park ravine discovered Levy's remains. What he thought...
...familiar Pentagon-procurement pattern, the Navy and its contractors began blaming one another for the spiraling costs once the program came under a critical spotlight. John Young, the Pentagon's outgoing acquisition czar, recently blamed both. He cited the program as emblematic of a Pentagon culture wedded to rosy cost projections. "Higher costs, whether based on low estimates or poor enterprise management, is unacceptable and harmful to the defense enterprise," he wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month. "The acquisition team bears significant responsibility for moving forward with these programs built on inadequate foundations." (Read "Can Robert Gates Tame...