Word: grails
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...drive to put a U.S. woman on Everest had been something between grail and financing gimmick for at least a decade. Everything -- gender, nationalism, internationalism, ever more dangerous routes, climbing solo and without oxygen, and climbing quickly with little equipment, "Alpine style" -- is a gimmick to Himalayan climbers, whose hobby is absurdly expensive. The most strenuous effort is not on the wind-racked ridges above Camp 4; it is in corporate conference rooms, where idlers with powerful legs try to persuade achievers in powerful suits to pay for their vacations...
...Strategic stability is the holy grail to defense planners," says former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Hopes of achieving national military superiority disappeared in the radioactive clouds over Hiroshima; today nuclear deterrence is built on the shaky assurance that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union could absorb an attack and still devastate its enemy in response. By this logic, a first strike would never be attempted...
...foursomes, the margin of victory will hang on fine points: how well a group conveys the mood and emotion of a song and how precisely its singers blend their four notes to produce a fifth, wholly new harmonic. That high, ringing fifth tone -- the overtone, or "bird" -- is the grail that every barbershop quartet strives...
...journalist with lots of integrity," says Professor Kenneth Goldstein. Equally important, Konner is said to be a good administrator who knows how to raise money. From her spot on the university board, she was acutely aware of what she calls the school's "noble search to find the Holy Grail." Now that she has been chosen, she quips, "either they gave up or they found...
Best Mascot: Clarkson's Golden Knight. Got lost looking for the Holy Grail. Wound up in upstate New York...