Word: pivot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even after the Army brings its recruits in, it must struggle with the question of how to train and arm them for the wars of the future. Should the Army continue as a mostly heavy, armored force, or pivot to become a more nimble, fast-deploying outfit? The Pentagon's reluctance earlier this year to send the Army's AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships into battle over Kosovo showed how quickly cold war weapons can become irrelevant. Slowly, the Army is coming to realize that it may be too cumbersome and too complex for future conflicts. The service is weighing...
Despite some sweet moments and sincere performances, the show fails to register. One problem is that adapter Richard Nelson has moved the pivot of the story--a song that stirs memories in Gabriel's wife (Brown) of a long-dead boy who once loved her--to earlier in the evening, thus throwing off the rhythm of the piece. (Another change: she sings the song rather than hears it.) What's more, Walken seems blandly disengaged as Gabriel, missing the psychological tension, singing indifferently and barely hinting at an Irish accent. Walken used to be a Broadway dancer, but here...
...this for the structure of the universe: it does tend to repeat itself. Stars orbit the pivot point at the center of galaxies, planets in turn orbit stars, and moons in turn orbit planets. Last week astronomers writing in the journal Nature announced that this cosmic reductionism goes even further. For the first time, ground-based telescopes spotted a tiny moonlet orbiting a mere asteroid in Earth's own solar system...
...excitement to agree that groundwater is a big deal. It's the source of drinking water for half the U.S. population. Nebraska floats on water, sitting atop a gigantic sponge of sand and gravel that contains several aquifers. Farmers can drill into the rich soil, erect a center-pivot sprinkler system and watch corn grow as high as an elephant...
...With feet crossed, pivot on quarter turn to right and start again...