Word: habit
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Navy's A-12 Avenger attack-bomber development has been so mismanaged that three high-ranking uniformed officers and a top Defense Department official were forced out of their jobs or censured. One problem has been the Pentagon's familiar habit of permitting huge overruns on contracts. A layman might see an easy solution: the contractors should either live up to their commitments or lose the work. But that is not the military...
...luck ran out. It was shortly after 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 28, at a point in the Kuwaiti desert about 14 miles north of the Saudi border. On eight previous smuggling runs, the midday heat had protected Basa's overland enterprise. The Iraqis, everyone knew, were creatures of habit who invariably shunned the harsh...
...only did Milosevic become the first holdover from the communist past to retain the presidency of a Yugoslav republic in an open election; his habit of waving the bloodied shirt of ethnic grievances set Serbia on a course of imminent collision with other Yugoslavs, notably Croats and Slovenes. Said Aleksandar Baljak, a Serbian journalist: "Democracy came and knocked at the door, but we weren't at home...
...help of a Soviet citizen named Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer), he is supposed to spirit out of the U.S.S.R. a manuscript by a dissident scientist that supposedly has large strategic implications for the West -- or at least the portion of it that is loath to give up the cold war habit of mind. The two operatives naturally fall in love, and since old Barley's interest in geopolitics is minimal at best, his primary goal switches from smuggling documents to protecting his lady...
...same hazards apply to speed-reading. Yes, we are bedeviled each day by a mound of papers, and we need to have some way of getting swiftly at the vitals of letters or articles or presentations. But the habit of skimming is too easily carried over to creative reading. Few things are more rewarding than the way the mind can hover over a luminous paragraph or even a phrase, allowing it to light up the imagination. The way the mind transforms little markings on paper into images is one of the highest manifestations of human uniqueness...