Word: thumbings
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...master of this brightly colored universe -- or at least I'm supposed to be. By pointing my index finger and cocking my thumb, I can swoop down among the skyscrapers. I can wheel by the Space Needle, close enough to hear the clatter of silverware in its restaurant. I can dive beneath the deep- blue surface of the sound, go swimming with the whale and bask in the staccato chatter of its birdlike mating call...
...with the electronic glove that is supposed to be my steering wheel. But like the dreamer in a nightmare who tries to leap out of the way of a speeding locomotive and finds his legs won't work, I'm pointing my finger and bending my thumb every which way with no visible result. Feeling more and more foolish in my futuristic headgear, I'm stranded in space above a cartoon rendering of a corner of Washington State, the victim of a computer simulation gone horribly awry...
...believe inflation will increase. They have good reason for gloom, beyond the tendency for such fears to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Big oil-price increases act like a stiff tax increase, pulling money out of consumers' pockets and reducing their ability to buy other products. A rule of thumb is that an annual increase of $8 per bbl. in oil prices reduces economic growth 1 percentage point a year. But petroleum has already risen more than that, and subtracting a point from growth leaves almost nothing. So if prices stay put, says a Bush Administration official, "growth is going...
...Whitehall ordered Tornado fighter-bombers and a squadron of Jaguar ground-attack jets to the gulf, along with Rapier ground-to-air missiles. If Saddam intends to invade Saudi Arabia, he will probably have to do it before those forces are in place. The military planner's rule of thumb is that to be successful, attackers must outnumber defenders by 3 to 1. When the U.S. deployment is added to the Saudi armed forces of 65,000, defenders will add up to more than 100,000. Iraq could call on the 170,000-man elite invasion force...
...anyone who still thinks of the banjo as suitable only for rippling accompaniment to high-pitched country harmonies, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is pure revelation. As a technician, Fleck is hummingbird-fast, whether picking with three fingers, Scruggs-style, or with the back-and-forth, thumb- and-forefinger method pioneered by Don Reno. Yet his technique is always at the service of a sophisticated musical imagination that can make the instrument sound as if it were born to play jazz. Unlike a guitar, a banjo cannot sustain a note for very long. ("Pop, ping, and then it's gone...