Word: gangplanks
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Imagine revising Genesis. In the new version Noah stands on the gangplank to the ark, reviewing the species of the world pair by pair, deciding on a purely economic basis which creatures to save and which to consign to the deepening waters. He turns away the pests, the serpents and other species he deems useless to man or too costly to take along. If such a vision strains the imagination, consider the call by some Bush Administration officials to amend the Endangered Species Act. Their aim is to expand greatly the powers of a committee of political appointees that already...
...retired Navy admiral had walked the gangplank for his skipper in the 1987 congressional hearings, insisting that "the buck stops with me" in the Iran-contra affair. But once he faced trial on five charges of destroying documents and lying to Congress, John Poindexter switched signals and called Ronald Reagan as his star witness to share some responsibility for the Administration's secret policies to sell arms to Iran and assist the Nicaraguan contras. The former President failed to help his loyal National Security Adviser. Confused, forgetful and oblivious to the public record, Reagan would not even concede that Congress...
...Farther down the river, at Wanxian, a young woman stevedore, of the same age as the oscilloscope workers, bends and stoops; all her muscles quiver as she heaves and finally lifts two huge buckets of pig livers for the third-class passengers. She staggers, makes it, totters up the gangplank. She is followed by other young women, beasts of burden, staggering under the bales, the cartons, the loadings of the vessel. I am pleased to watch them revolt, screaming, shaking fists at the forewoman who commands them. But next morning I am passing through the stark wonder of the gorges...
...ferryboat St. Edmund. The diesel-powered vessel discharged its human cargo, the last of some 11,000 prisoners taken by Britain in the Falkland Islands war, on a windswept dock in out-of-the-way Puerto Madryn, 650 miles south of Buenos Aires. One of the first down the gangplank was General Mario Benjamin Menendez, army commander in the Falklands, who saddened many of his countrymen when he surrendered to Britain's Major General John Jeremy Moore. Military authorities refused to allow the returning soldiers to be interviewed or photographed, but Menendez did offer a few words...
...species stems from the Ehrlichs' first and constantly invoked example, which, sad to say, is laughable. "Imagine that, just before you are about to board a jet plane, you see a man busily prying rivets out of its wings. As you rush in a panic back down the gangplank, he calls out, "Don't worry, I've taken a lot of rivets out already and the wing hasn't fallen off yet!" This scenario is supposed to be analagous to losing a few more species: One more might not matter, but, on the other hand, it might lead to disaster...