Word: pocus
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Leaning precariously on Pirandello and Brecht for his dramatic hocus and pocus, Heller has written a spoof of the old-fashioned war play or film. Before a precarious bombing mission, an Air Force captain (Stacy Keach) goads his squadron with poetic tunes of glory extrapolated from Kipling and Shakespeare. A corporal disappears in the first sortie and a sergeant is shot to death for refusing to go on a second. Heller indulges in hortatory asides to the audience: "Another young boy killed in a war and all of you just sit there." By the time the captain has to order...
...cost the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co. $500,000 to construct. Architects for the new America: Sparkman & Stephens, the same firm that designed Intrepid. * The Twelves get their name from a complicated rating formula that takes into consideration length, girth, sail area and freeboard, and after much mathematical hocus-pocus equals 39.37 ft., or twelve meters. * And who now has his own class named after him, the 30-ft. Shields boat, first brought out in 1963 and currently a hot favorite at $8,000 among sailors, with 147 sold...
...ultimate flourish to all this legislative hocus pocus is a provision in the program prohibiting the federal government from setting up its own insured program unless it can prove the states (and USAF) are not doing the job -- and making such a determination could take years...
Double Six. Sukarno believes in some of the hocus-pocus himself. He always hides on his birthday, the sixth of June, because it is an unlucky number ("double six"). This year obviously was the worst of all. His birthday was 6/6/66. Long before the dreaded double double six, however, Sukarno's luck had run out. He made his biggest mistake in February. He fired Nasution as Defense Minister and brought in two proCommunists to take his place. In the confusion that followed, the army had to come up with a new leader to fight the Bung. It chose Suharto...
...divorce laws theoretically shun the idea of mutual consent because it offends religious tradition and raises the specter of too many marriages being dissolved by whim or passing despair. In practice, however, 90% of U.S. divorces actually involve mutual consent that is disguised by legal hocus-pocus or outright perjury. Reason: the whole U.S. approach begins with a disastrous premise. Instead of recognizing that both parties are almost always partly to blame, U.S. law demands verified proof of "fault" by one partner-and only one. The insistence seems almost sadistic: the "innocent" party must prove his or her mate "guilty...