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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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120489
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12048900.031
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1990-09-19
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NATION, Page 48Grapevine
POISON PEN. Nancy Reagan may feel better now that she has had
what she calls My Turn, but reviewers have blistered her
best-selling book for its get-even tone. The New York Times:
"Smugness infects these memoirs." The New Republic: "Whining." The
Boston Globe: "Hoity-toity." The Washington Post critic counted 42
pages on which Mrs. Reagan wrote that she was outraged, irritated,
furious, angry or annoyed. Even her agent Mort Janklow concedes
that Nancy vented "her pent-up anger." That, he claimed, was what
made it "a wonderful book."
FIRE AWAY. If the cold war had ever become so hot that a U.S.
or Soviet leader had decided to go ballistic, would all those ICBMs
have worked the way they were designed to? Under the INF treaty the
Soviet Union has the option of destroying 100 SS-20
intermediate-range nuclear missiles by launching them, unarmed,
into test ranges. So far, it has fired off 72 SS-20s and, to the
amazement of one U.S. Air Force observer, "all those suckers flew."
Since the U.S. chose to destroy its comparable Pershing missiles
by blowing them up, no one will ever know whether its birds were
equally reliable.
NICE WORK, JOE. Shipworkers repairing a 650-ft.-long gash in
the Exxon Valdez at San Diego's National Steel and Shipbuilding Co.
are amazed that Captain Joseph Hazelwood and his crew kept the
tanker from sinking after it ripped into a reef in Alaska's Prince
William Sound last March. After the collision, the crew quickly
sealed off the hatches to the ship's tanks, in effect creating a
bubble that helped stabilize the vessel. Though he concedes that
the accident should not have occurred, NASSCO Vice President Fred
Hallett asserts that only the "incredible seamanship" of the Valdez
crew prevented the spill from being much worse. Says Hallett:
"Imagine an oil spill not of 11 million gallons but 60 million."
POPPING PILLS AND PUMPING LEAD. To build muscles that will help
them outwrestle suspects, some police officers have taken to
popping anabolic steroids. But mental-health experts warn that the
drugs can make users emotionally unstable and aggressive. Such
concerns were expressed in Houston after Patrolman Scott
Tschirhart, a body builder, fatally pumped six shots into an armed
off-duty security guard he had stopped for speeding on Nov. 15.
While not linking the killing to steroid use, Police Chief Lee
Brown has proposed random drug testing of his men.