Word: instruments
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Superconducting Supercollider Big Science took a big hit when Congress finally pulled the plug on the Superconducting Supercollider, the 54-mile-around atom smasher that was supposed to be the world's largest and most sophisticated scientific instrument but is now just a $2 billion hole in the ground. The SSC was doomed when its projected cost escalated from $5 billion to more than $11 billion, making it look less like Big Science and more like Big Bloated Bureaucracy...
...When Neville Chamberlain declared ''peace for our time'' after Munich, he gave peacemakers a reputation for fatuous optimism and appeasement from which it took them years to recover. Philosophers of war since Hiroshima have taught, hopefully, that the nuclear threat has made armed conflict ultimately untenable as a Clausewitzian instrument (foreign policy that happens to kill) useful in settling disputes. But not everyone has absorbed the lesson. Among other things, war has an archetypal prestige and bristling drama with which peace has trouble competing: Milton's Lucifer in Paradise Lost is much more interesting than Milton...
...energy, the audience, the majority of whom sported thick under-21 crosses on both hands, jumped along like jubilant trick-or-treaters being handed candy. The multi-racial band members, who look like the poster children for a United Colors of Benetton ad, raced across the stage to switch instruments. The two men on guitar, Ian Parton and Sam Dook, move to keyboards or to the second drum kit in the back of the stage while a cute female multi-instrumentalist bounced between keyboard, guitar, and a bizarre wind-instrument that looked like a cross between a clarinet...
...nouns, like the first name of his Wildcats coach Lute Olsen, who incidentally just hired Simon as an assistant coach, are allowed in Scrabble. As tactfully as I can muster, I remind him of this stipulation, but with patience he informs me that a lute is also a string instrument or a clay-like substance. The education continues. Still, it only counts for six points, and I continue with a masterful bit of psychology, playing “bell” onto the new “L”. Simon had a run-in with the authorities...
...second event, John Harbison’s “Concerto for Viola and Orchestra,” was rare on two accounts. First, the composer was present in the audience; and second, the viola is rarely used as a solo instrument. “The traditional concerto is a battle between the soloist and the orchestra,” says Zander, and the viola—unlike its close cousin, the violin—has no chance of victory. With this in mind, Harbison, who plays the viola himself, cut the orchestra’s size significantly. The result...