Word: threads
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...airliner crashes in the first paragraph of a novel. The author, who, of course, has decreed the time and place of the crash as well as the passenger list, has a number of choices. Does he thread backward, exploring the chilly ironies of Fate's dice rolling? Forward, tracing a bizarre linkage of events unexpectedly tumbled into motion? Does he find sabotage, corporate greed, a pilot who memorized an eye chart he could no longer read...
...main plot thread off which Altman works involves Blondie O'Hara (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a punchy, fast-talking gal looking to get her husband Johnny (Dermot Mulroney) back from a gangster, Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte), whom he foolishly irked. Kidnapping Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson), the doped-up wife of a prominent politician, arises as the logical solution: she hopes to force Mr. Stilton to sic the police on the gangster...
...turned out, the ship did not exactly thread this navigational needle, slipping into the atmosphere just before 10 a.m. Pacific time at an incline of 13.9[degrees]. In the cluster of cubicles that serve as J.P.L.'s modest mission control, the engineers seated at consoles leaned forward, looking for the telemetry numbers that would indicate that the ship was indeed decelerating as it should. Support engineers stood behind them, squinting at the screens. At his console, chief engineer Rob Manning scanned the numbers flowing back from space. "Spacecraft is now slowing down very rapidly," he said reassuringly...
Even to some defenders, Starr is beginning to look like a detective who has lost the thread of his case. Named in 1994 to investigate the Clintons' Whitewater land investment with Jim and Susan McDougal--a mandate that was broadened to include Vince Foster's suicide, the White House travel-office firings, the Administration's possible misuse of FBI files and several other matters--Starr has obtained 12 convictions and guilty pleas. But nearly three years and more than $30 million later, the American public is little closer to understanding the circumstances and import of the original land deals. Questions...
Officially, the physician's red thread has been given to Tung Chee-hwa, a Hong Kong multimillionaire who lived for nine years in the U.S. and was handpicked by the communist bosses in Beijing to carry out their promise of a "high degree of autonomy" for the capitalist enclave. Looking over his shoulder, however, is an ardent spokesman for those who insist that Hong Kong can rule itself. Martin Lee stakes his claim to leadership on the voter's mandate to make Beijing live up to democratic...