Word: rattletraps
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After that he became even closer to Paul Allen. They learned an artificial-intelligence language together and found odd jobs as programmers. "We were true partners," Gates says. "We'd talk for hours every day." After Gates went off to Harvard, Allen drove his rattletrap Chrysler cross-country to continue their collaboration. He eventually persuaded Gates to become that university's most famous modern dropout in order to start a software company, which they initially dubbed Micro-Soft (after considering the name Allen & Gates Inc.), to write versions of BASIC for the first personal computers. It was an intense relationship...
...meantime, Lamar Alexander and Pat Buchanan have bumped up against a ceiling at 10%; Phil Gramm will try to hang on through the early races to reach his home turf in the Southern primaries on March 12. He parcels out his money dime by dime, flying around in rattletrap planes, wearing a beige wool coat he bought from a street vendor in Washington in 1979 and until recently sporting shabby shoes and a broken watch. Aides joke that they've thought the Senator would make one of them share a room with him if the local Super 8 gave...
Despite such inspiring beginnings, the parliament of nations at 50 has aged into such a rattletrap that its gruffest champions acknowledge design flaws. More than ever, the Secretariat appears to be a papermaking machine, the General Assembly an unwieldy debating society, and the mishmash of agencies spread around the globe a swamp into which good intentions can sink with barely a trace. Above all, the paramount U.N. duty of keeping the peace is in disgrace. All those recent ambitions of using the Security Council as the vehicle of a post-cold war new world order, with the Permanent Five members...
Arriving in Lusaka today, a visitor might think Zambia is a country emerging from war. Stretches of road in the capital look as if they have been under mortar bombardment. Buildings are dilapidated, vehicles rattletrap. Thousands live in tin-shelter shantytowns. Unemployment and crime are running high. Zambia has become one of the poorest nations anywhere, with one of the world's highest per capita foreign debts -- nearly $1,000 for each of its 8 million people; average annual income per person is less than $290. As in many African countries, a small layer of extremely wealthy people flourishes above...
Despite the grimness, director-adapter Frank Galati finds many small moments of decency, charity, humor and hope. He moves the 35 performers with cinematic grace and achieves great variety during a middle hour consisting largely of moving a rattletrap truck back and forth. The ordeal of the Joads remains evocative of its era, yet Steinbeck's themes prove contemporary: the vulnerability of unskilled labor, the soul-destroying impact of poverty and homelessness, the ease with which the rich and powerful subvert law enforcement to their own ends. The Joads pride themselves on being scrappers, but in this conflict they never...