Word: workmen
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...monument to Murphy's Law, the great white Batmobile that will be piloted by Astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen is already two years behind its timetable and $3.6 billion over budget. Only a year ago workmen had diagnosed the ship's ailment as "smallpox," a reference to the holes left in its outer shell when heat-dissipating tiles became unglued. At one time or another, the entire project became unglued. Perhaps it was prophetic that the task force proposing the space shuttle back in 1969 was headed by Vice President Spiro Agnew. In any case, Columbia offers...
This historical pronouncement was accompanied by some typical Reagan anecdotage, including a rambling story about a federal program for the maintenance of cattle ponds. Some years ago, when one of the ponds on Reagan's ranch was being repaired by his own workmen, he recounted, "these Department of Agriculture guys showed up and said, 'Send these guys home. The Government would pay for it.' " Reagan, who said that he ended up paying for the repairs himself, told the story with great verve, though some at the meeting wondered what relevance it had to the current fiscal crisis...
...course, none of that explains why you have to be unconscious for all the pruning and strengthening to occur. Maybe it's just easier to be asleep than awake while the work is going on. "When you fall asleep, it's like you're leaving your house and the workmen come in to renovate," suggests Terry Sejnowski, a computational neurobiologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "You don't want to live in the house while the construction's going on because it's a mess...
...remote and barren highlands of eastern Iceland, the herds of reindeer and flocks of pink-footed geese suddenly have some company. Hundreds of workmen have moved into the unspoiled valleys northeast of the Vatnajökull icecap, where glacial rivers flow through magnificent canyons in a starkly beautiful volcanic landscape. The men are working on the Kárahnjúkar Hydroelectric Project: a vast network of dams, reservoirs, tunnels, power stations and high-tension lines to support a new aluminum-smelting plant for the U.S. multinational Alcoa on a fjord some 70 km to the east. At a total...
Outside, under a sliver of moon, the cell's surveillance teams are hard at work, monitoring firing positions for their next assault. Spotters circle the area in taxis; others pose as workmen walking home and flip hand signals to passing colleagues. They all report to Abu Ali, a former officer in the Fedayeen Saddam militia who is well schooled in guerrilla tactics. A tall, sinewy figure with a weathered face, Abu Ali makes no secret of his ambition to attack Americans: "I want to kill all Bush's soldiers until they leave Iraq or it becomes their desert graveyard...