Word: objections
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Speed was not the main object. Each of 113 driver-passenger teams drew meticulous instructions (as in the game of treasure hunt) for checking in at hard-to-spot "control" and "inquisition" points as well as visiting synagogues along the way. At each control point, teams had to perform some action correctly: waving a handkerchief, snatching a brass ring while driving at 9 m.p.h., buying a stick of candy (but drivers who sneaked a lick en route had it scored against them). At each of five inquisition points, teams had to answer a question. The questions: 1) When...
...Object of Horror. Comedy took matters a stage further. Dr. Breuer became so fascinated by Anna's hysteria that Mrs. Breuer grew madly jealous. So Breuer stopped seeing Anna, who promptly flew into "the throes of an hysterical childbirth, the logical termination of a phantom pregnancy that had been invisibly developing in response to Breuer's ministrations...
...secondary possibilities of atomic war, says Chemist Jack De Ment, in The Military Engineer, is atomic duds. During a bombing attack, one city may be spared while other cities near by are heavily bombed. But into the heart of the untouched city, the enemy may drop a peculiar, ominous object to start a destructive panic...
...could tell immediately the true nature of the object. It might be a genuine dud, i.e., an atomic bomb that did not explode as intended. It might be a delayed-action bomb, or it might be a harmless casing deliberately filled with inert material. The people of the attacked city, unless quickly reassured, would be apt to be as panicked by a cheap dummy bomb as by an expensive real one that might explode any second into a white-hot ball of fire a couple of miles in diameter...
...Ment, raising the problem for military engineers to consider, gives no solution. Even experts would have a hard time distinguishing a delayed-action bomb from a dud or a harmless fake, especially if the object had been seen to sink to the bottom of the harbor. Civil defense authorities would have to decide promptly whether to evacuate the city, and a wrong decision either way would prove costly. In any case, the threatening object would have to be investigated, and this would not be a job for the poor in spirit. "An atomic-bomb disposal unit," says De Ment conservatively...