Word: ruse
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...potgrowers are fighting back. Some try to hide their sinsemilla stalks among tall sunflowers. One imaginative cultivator hung red Christmas-tree balls on his pot plants, trying to make them look like tomato plants from the air. The ruse did not work, because any cultivated ground in the middle of a forest attracts the suspicions of drug-enforcement officials. A few growers have even taken shots at the agents' low-flying planes, causing one casualty: a sheriff was wounded in the back while circling a marijuana patch in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles...
...theory stirred an instant uproar. Says American Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, a friend of Teilhard's: "I don't think it was in his character." J.S. Werner, who with Oakley helped expose the forgery, doubts that Teilhard would have risked his burgeoning scientific career with such a ruse. Gould remains convinced it was a youthful joke that succeeded so well it made a confession difficult. Says he: "The burden of proof must now rest with those who would hold Father Teilhard blameless...
...children. As a modern-day Chinese proverb has it: "The 10,000 things are good, but they are not as good as a well-connected father." In Shanghai, one clever young swindler named Tang Fang posed as the son of the first secretary of the provincial party committee, a ruse that won him not only watches, money and fashionable clothes but also the affection of a comely female soldier...
Segal writes screenplays, beautifully thin scripts for beautifully thin people to act in beautifully thin films. When he took his screenplay Love Story to Paramount Pictures more than a decade ago, they told him to turn it into a novel while they were making the film. The ruse worked, and for one glorious week, Love Story stood at the top of both the hardcover and paperback bestseller charts and was the number one grossing movie in the country. Not bad for a Harvard man who teaches Latin and Greek literature at Yale...
...series. Moreover, the amount referred to was in addition to the regular fee of $510,000 per show. When Martin inquired further, an unidentified official at Spelling-Goldberg, one of Hollywood's most profitable TV production companies, told her that the breakdown of payments was a ruse to diminish the Wagners' share of the profits. The official also explained to Martin that before the demise of another Spelling-Goldberg program, Starsky and Hutch, $30,000 per episode in Charlie's Angels fees was diverted to the account of the less successful show, in which the Wagners...