Word: foolproofing
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People have written comic opera and talented people have even written funny comic operas, but no one before or since Verdi has taken a full orchestra and the incredibly indiscreet apparatus of grand opera and wheedled out of them a 100 per cent foolproof light comedy. Verdi himself only did the trick once--in his last and most brillant opera, Falstaff...
Timing. The Pentagon's current impression is that the Soviet orbital bomb is principally designed against vulnerable American bomber bases. While admitting that there is no foolproof defense against massive Soviet ICBM and FOBS attacks on cities, McNamara argued, as is his wont, that the best deterrent continues to be the immense target killing powers of the ground-based U.S. ICBM arsenal, the roughly 600 nuclear-armed strategic bombers and 650 Polaris missiles...
Writer Herman J. Mankiewicz once listened to Cohn brag: "When I'm alone in a projection room, I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good. It's as simple as that." There was a momentary silence; then Mankiewicz abruptly terminated his employment: "Imagine-the whole world wired to Harry Cohn's behind...
...another story. Historically, the vice-presidency has by no means been a foolproof route to the White House. This has been so because mediocre men have often been chosen for the job-a description that scarcely fits Hubert Humphrey. The fact remains that only three Veeps in U.S. history have ascended to the presidency via the ballot (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren); initially, at least, all the others who reached the White House, from John Tyler to Lyndon Johnson, were elevated by the death of a President...
...village, and never to London -or to a soccer game. For the first time in his life, three weeks ago he took a 140 flutter. It brought him a $1.40 windfall, so he decided to use some of his winnings to try again. After all, he had a foolproof system: Maude called out numbers at random for him as he filled in the betting coupon...