Word: prompts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have nabbed the Nobel Prize, including geneticist Barbara McClintock (1981) and former U.S. poet laureate Joseph Brodsky (1981). Others have won Pulitzers, Fields Medals -the math world's top honor - and National Book Awards. The chosen few are informed by an "out-of-the-blue" phone call, which can prompt shrieks, stunned silence, and, in the case of one recipient about three years ago, an apparent fainting epidemic. One stubborn recipient put up a protracted fight before Fanton convinced him to step away from his work to take the call, and then brusquely got off the phone...
...overreaching when they win huge majorities. Franklin Roosevelt did so after his re-election landslide in 1936; so did Lyndon Johnson after 1964. Obama could as well. With big majorities in the House and Senate, he'd probably take another run at universal health care, which is what helped prompt the Gingrich revolution in 1994. He could hike taxes and impose tough new environmental regulations on business. He might preside over a messy withdrawal from Iraq and perhaps see Iran complete development of a nuclear weapon. Any one of these things could pump some life into the near catatonic...
...rebuilding in disaster-prone areas like Dauphin Island, Ala., obliterated by Hurricane Frederic and subsequent storms. SUCCESS FAILURE Ronald Reagan 1981-1989 WIDENING REACH Reagan reinterprets FEMA's role to fit the Cold War, granting it power to cope with a nuclear attack and even, reportedly, implement martial law--prompting clashes over jurisdiction with the Justice Department. Meanwhile, underqualified political appointees fill the agency's bureaucracy; in 1985 FEMA Director Louis Giuffrida steps down amid allegations of fraud. SUCCESS FAILURE George H. W. Bush 1989-1993 UNPREPARED FEMA's lackluster response to 1989's Hurricane Hugo prompts Senator Fritz Hollings...
...Committee on Conventional Prompt Global Strike Capability believes that there are threats (like nuclear terrorism) that the Pentagon's fleets of attack planes and missiles cannot handle and which have to be stopped with the immediacy of the push of a button by a future U.S. President. It's not quite a "death ray" but it's the closest existing technology can get to that fantasy weapon. Still, skeptics roll their eyes and say that the report's authors are like a bunch of junior high school boys who have seen all the James Bond movies and believe that...
...report does point out one area of potential trouble in its own proposal. Deploying two kinds of missiles together in the same submarine "raises at least the possibility of an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon instead of the intended launch of a conventional weapon because... prompt global strikes may often allow little time for second checks." Command and control becomes a dicey issue. Among other safeguards, the Navy has proposed separate "firing keys" for each kind of missile, each kept in its own safe, and each under the control of a different senior officer on the submarine. Now, that...