Word: pigeoning
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...grand strategy: "Weight is the enemy . . . Whatever saves weight saves cost. The car must look fast, whether in motion or stationary. I want it to look as if it were leaping forward; I want 'built-in' motion ... If it looks 'stopped' it is a dead pigeon ... I want one that looks alive as a leaping greyhound...
This places the operation on a skill, rather than gambling, basis, and the pigeons show their appreciation by registering amazing reaction speeds, up to one-tenth of a second. This makes pigeon-speed "greater than that of apes and equal to humans...
Another example of feathered intelligence was a pigeon used last year, who was taught to play a seven-note tune on a piano--more than a great many people...
Professor Skinner gets his birds, or "organisms" as he calls them, from a local pigeon-breeding farm. He admits pigeons are "notoriously dumb creatures," but admires their steadiness of intellect, or lack of it. The farm gives him surplus white homing-pigeons. They are too easy prey for hawks, but make excellent material for the battle of the button...
...lugubrious little man for whom life has suddenly become unbearably complex, Mickey sat up in his hospital room in powder-blue pajamas, his arm strapped up in a sling. Snapped Mickey: "I set myself up four nights in a row as a clay pigeon. [Attorney General] Howser must have had a hell of a tip." He was sure it was not a local bookie ("Every bookie in this town is a very close personal friend of mine," said Mickey firmly), nor imported Eastern gunmen. "I call New York, Chicago and Cleveland regular," said Mickey. "I'm a well-informed...