Word: mylar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Paul MacCready, above, insisted that inventing anything--even if impractical--spawned something critically important: a new way of thinking about the world. In August 1977 the curious, free-spirited inventor unveiled his Gossamer Condor, a winged, 70-lb. (about 30 kg) contraption made of piano wire, aluminum tubing and Mylar, which completed the first sustained human-powered flight. "Your parents will be wrong. Your schools will be wrong," he told a group of schoolchildren in 1998. "If you look for the answers yourself, you will find that you can do better...
...Somebody has to drop the 7,000 pounds of varicolored tissue and motley Mylar. It's done by a crew of about 110 volunteers perched on roofs and setbacks of seven buildings from 43rd to 48th Streets. They work under the guidance of confetti master Treb Heining, the Newport Beach, Calif., balloonatic whose company, Treb, Inc., is the go-to outfit for balloon effusions at the Republican National Conventions. Since 1991 Treb has coordinated the confetti fete for the Times Square Alliance, the business association in charge of the big show...
...taped music acts and, at the top of each hour from 7 p.m. on, a countdown to zero second and a feed from whatever region (London, England; Ponta Verde, Brazil) is celebrating its midnight moment. That's when Treb's troops would fling into action, unfurling, say, the Mylar strips that blanketed the sky with what looked like glitter done by ILM. Some freelancers, stationed in the few Times Square high-rises with openable windows, unfurled toilet-paper streamers - two-ply contrails that, caressed by wind currents in the concrete canyon, glided and twirled through the night air for minutes...
...piece of NASCAR ingenuity already deployed in Iraq: the layers of clear plastic sheets on the front of race-car windshields, which crews can quickly tear off each time oil or grit obstructs the driver's view. Similar Mylar sheets are now used on Black Hawk helicopters, whose windshields in the past had to be routinely replaced after getting pitted by desert sand. A set of layered sheets, which costs $1,100, is a lot cheaper than the $15,000 windshields. Could an invasion of flashy logos be far behind...
...like Wayne Newton." An oddly menacing figure who turns up at Dominica's motel "looked like Dustin Hoffman, for some reason." Similarly, Martin reports on natural scenery most confidently when he can compare it to name-brand products. Walking along the beach, he notes that "the Gulf shined like mylar." Out for a drive, he remarks, "The clouds were like spills of dark Cool Whip going in slow motion across the sky." In fact, the real world impresses Martin most when it seems artificial. Seeing Dominica standing at night beside the motel's illuminated swimming pool, he observes...