Word: tautly
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...reporting for alert duty, Lieut. Colonel Dante Bulli and his crew in effect braced themselves at the end of a taut, outstretched spring. The trigger was the rasping sound of a klaxon horn. At any moment, that horn might blow. It could mean that a Soviet nose cone was on its way carrying destruction, and that there were 15 minutes in which to get off the ground and head for preassigned Soviet targets. There would be no time for second thoughts, no room for second-guessing as to whether some button-pusher was running a test. To the SAC alert...
...American political campaign was, in peacetime, something of a summer frolic, decked in bunting and confetti, full of oratorical balloon ascensions, baby-kissing, and free beer for everybody. The outside world learned to forgo any serious business and to watch with amused tolerance for the duration. In the taut days of 1960, the American political campaign is something quite different-a serious debate treating soberly the great issues that will affect the whole of mankind, enacted before the eyes of an anxious world...
...sharp contrast, is a stiff-upper-lip Philadelphia investment banker and World War II Navyman (four stripes in Air Intelligence). He went to Washington as Under Secretary to Navy Secretary Robert Anderson (now Secretary of the Treasury), inevitably inherited the top Navy job in 1957. He ran a taut and tidy ship, was always willing to listen and learn, but ready with a decision when it was called for. When a new naval aide reported to him for duty, Gates told him: "Look, I need ideas. I can light my own cigarettes." Says a three-star admiral: "If you dumped...
...Fourth of July Avenue, which forms the international boundary between Panama City and a residential area of the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone, 2,000 demonstrators and students, angry at being turned back when they tried to plant Panamanian flags on zone soil, stoned zone policemen. Across the city, 150 taut-faced Panamanians advanced on the U.S. embassy, hauled down the U.S. flag, hoisted Panama's, ripped the flag to shreds. With bird guns, bayonets and bazookas, U.S. troops came to guard the boundary. They had pinked nine Panamanians with bayonets, wounded three with bullets, sprayed nine more with bird...
...horizontal steel-in tension principles that apply to suspension bridges into a vertical context. The wires, in a state of tension, keep the mast unbending and rigid. The aluminum tubes, arranged like pairs of end-to-end coat hangers (see cut), push the wires apart to keep them taut. An exact balance of push-and-pull makes the tower stand...