Word: rubes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Speedy southpaws, a notably skittish breed, are traditionally either late bloomers or early dropouts. Lefty Grove was 27 before he hit his stride, Rube Waddell 25 before he found the strike zone, and Warren Spahn 25 before he won his first major-league game...
...innovation, however, nothing aboard Apollo 15 quite beats NASA's new I.RV (for Lunar Roving Vehicle), more commonly known as the "moon rover." Tucked away in the side of Falcon, the collapsible, 10-ft.-long jumble of aluminum tubing, wire and rods might easily be mistaken for a Rube Goldbergian version of an old-fashioned foldaway Murphy bed. Actually, it is one of the most unusual and expensive cars ever built (cost of the moon buggy program: $37.8 million...
...domestic project of his presidential term. The bill, designated the first piece of legislation introduced in the 92nd Congress, aims at the most important overhauling of the welfare system since the beginning of the dole. Its key section is Title IV, which calls for the end of the present Rube Goldbergian structure and in its place the establishment of Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, setting a guaranteed annual income of $2,400 for a family of four...
...Logic. The first part is hilarious. Esther Greenwood, as the heroine is called, is an awkward rube of a girl with "fifteen years of straight A's" behind her but absolutely no experience of life -even as it was known to teen-agers in the '50s. She and her fellow "guest" editors are herded around the city "like a wedding party with nothing but bridesmaids." Upon discovering caviar, Esther consumes a pound or so at a magazine luncheon, paving her plate with chicken slices and smearing on the high-priced spread. But she knows that the whole enterprise...
...guiltiest smog makers. Nothing might appear more hopeless than the quandary of an Italian couple in "The Argentine Ant," whose baby is overrun by marching ants, against whom all antidotes fail. But the minor characters of this crawly little fable -like Captain Brauni with his Rube Goldberg ant traps-have a jaunty energy that enables them to survive not only their plague but the plague of their author: dark moralizing. It is as if Calvino's people, exuberant for absolutely no good reason, are on their way to liberating him from the cursed logic of his pessimism. Stand...