Word: pilings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After any candidate who surpasses quotas is declared elected, the PR process begins to get complicated. Let's assume that this year, Walter Sullivan gets 200 more votes than the quota. A random sample of 200 of his supporting ballots are then extracted from his pile of ballots, and sorted according to the number two vote on each one. Any of the surplus ballots that are not marked with a second choice are discarded...
...favorite techniques is to take a small station wagon, pile the back with mattresses, lay a work of art under them, and rent the services of a small child. On a very hot Sunday afternoon, I drive from Venice to the border. So will thousands of other tourists. A few kilometers before customs I stop and buy a large ice-cream cone for the child. By the time I have reached the crowded border and the smartly dressed, white-gloved and harried customs officers, the child has smeared the gelato all over his face. The customs man always recoils...
...land of desperate losers, crooked insurance salesmen and small-time racketeers, of empty pockets and broken spirits. That was James M. Cain's America. If for Thomas Wolfe or Jack Kerouac The Road led to freedom, for Cain it was some kind of a prison, a vast, inescapable refuse pile for the hungry and homeless. The characters in Cain's books, most of them drifters and box-car bums, search desperately for a piece of anything to call home. And when they find it, in a highway tavern or a cheap boarding house, they cling to it ferociously...
...thriving market in Dara Adam Khail, a mud-splattered tribal settlement in Pakistan's North-West Frontier. Visiting in the early days of January 1980, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, DeVoss asked the most venerable gunsmith in Dara for a "beginner's weapon." From beneath a pile of Sten guns, the man unearthed what DeVoss thought was a ballpoint pen. But the pen could accommodate a .25-cal. slug that would kill at close range...
...philosophy is being tested by reality and challenged by Congress. But the President remains an irrepressible optimist. As he grappled with his economic predicament and the recalcitrance on Capitol Hill last week, he told an old joke about the ever-hopeful little boy who finds himself standing amid a pile of horse manure on Christmas morning. The punch line: "There must be a pony in here someplace." -By Walter Isaacson...