Word: flatly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...arguments are being overpowered by pure (if that is the word) politics. In a political climate that has made increased government spending taboo, the tax code is the best remaining means to hand out rewards to constituents. This is why even Republicans who were whooping it up for a flat tax last year (for instance, House majority leader Dick Armey) are now advocating a change as complex as indexing capital gains for inflation (Armey again). That's also why the new tax bill is being stuffed with special breaks for everyone from whaling captains to sky divers...
...from home to soccer game to swim lesson to juvenile-detention center, where most of them belong. The people who malign the minivan--if the gender police will grant me this small observation--are almost exclusively men. And they are at last having their way. Sales of minivans are flat this year, while sales of larger sport-utility vehicles soar. As a commercial product, minivans may not be in crisis, but their troubles reflect the troubles of the American male...
Barnacle Bill. Yogi. Casper. Scooby Doo. Flat Top, Boo-Boo. The Couch. Souffle. After billions of years of anonymity, a motley collection of rocks on the Martian flood plain called Ares Vallis at last had names of their own. And back on Earth last week, the Pathfinder scientists who had playfully nicknamed the rocks were enjoying, as one of them phrased it, "a rock festival," reveling in the torrent of data being yielded by the rock stars and their surroundings...
Preliminary readings from the ship indicated that landing conditions were well within what the engineers had expected. Pathfinder was tilted at an angle of less than 3[degrees], plenty flat enough to allow the rover to disembark. The solar arrays were being bathed by sun and were producing all the power the spacecraft needed. That same sun, however, was providing little heat: the temperature at Ares Vallis was a crisp -64[degrees]F. But Pathfinder, built to function in that kind of killing cold, seemed unaffected. "I'm ecstatic," said flight systems manager Brian Muirhead as the stream of healthy...
...settles safely on the planet surface. A small rover named Sojourner (24.5 inches long by 18.7 inches wide) will then emerge to study the planet's geological characteristics. Pathfinder will land at the dry mouth of an ancient channel called Ares Vallis. The site was picked for its relatively flat surface and the variety of rock and soil samples it may present. While the mission has ambitious scientific objectives, a more crucial goal is to show the system can do the job faster, better and cheaper than the pricey missions of the past. And if it has an amusing...