Word: takeoff
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...strong emotion seems to be humor, both memorized and spontaneous. He is a walking repertory theater of show-biz anecdotes, one-liners, elaborate routines (interestingly, he almost never tells a political anecdote). On the campaign plane, Nancy Reagan has made a ritual of rising a few moments after takeoff to roll an orange toward the emergency exit at the rear, which she usually manages to hit. When she is not along, Reagan takes over the routine and converts it into an act. Sometimes he is a bowler, sometimes a football player, frequently a pitcher squinting toward an imaginary catcher, shaking...
...grease paint, blending with their mottled uniforms and helmet covers, as in some military minstrel show. The order to board the plane snaps him from his reverie. "The only way down now will be to jump," he says to himself, just as he has said to himself with every takeoff before every jump...
...Mary Beard argued 50 years ago, the urban industrial North seized power from the agrarian South in a "second American revolution." Through cliometrics, says the University of Pittsburgh's Samuel Hays, historians have analyzed such production figures as railroad mileage and steel output, and found that the "takeoff points" occurred earlier, in the 1840s and early '50s. Cliometricians also use voting data to learn, say, the cultural differences between Republicans and Democrats. (Ethnic and religious divisions turn out to be more important than arguments over economic issues...
...second large automobile and truck factory has ceased; and Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, has printed lengthy exhortations to conserve energy. Except at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where many foreign flights arrive, jets of Aeroflot, the national airline, no longer use their own engines to taxi into takeoff position; to save fuel, they are towed into position by tractors. NATO radar bases report that Soviet air force training flights, already 30% below those of the U.S. and Europe, have been cut back even further...
...belongs in the white-knuckle class; its safety record is somewhat cloudy since domestic crashes are rarely announced unless foreigners are aboard. Aeroflot food is all but inedible, with garlic sometimes being the only identifiable ingredient. It is wise to accept one of the gray paper bags offered before takeoff; they can be in great demand during the flight...