How to Pronounce
Technicality
Related Pronunciations
- Mechanicality
- Legal Technicality
- Legal Technicality
- The Technicality
- Conducting Technicality
- Hyper-technicality
- Over-technicality
- Technicality Whore
- Technicality Invite
- Technicality Win
- Technically
- Technoality
- Ethnicality
- Legal Legal Technicality
- Technically Recognized
- Technically Challenging
- Technically Flawless
- Technically Perfect
- Technically Inclined
- Technically Literate
- Technically Gifted
- Technically Sound
- Technically Skilled
- Technically Proficient
- Technically Single
- Technically Annoying
- Technically Challenged
- Technically Legal
- Technicality Asshole (a.k.a., T.A.)
- Technically Gifted Player
- Technically Skilled Player
- Technically Gifted Musician
- Technically-sound Approach
- Technically Supporting Yourself
- Technically Supporting Yourself?input=Technically Supporting Yourself
- Something Is Technically Wrong
- Technically-augmented Ta-tas
- "You can touch them. Or me. I don't mind, Master," Ahsoka said, throwing all caution to the wind in the heat of the moment. "I know you like me like that. You always get so protective when some of the guys in the 501st tease me - so does Rex. And Master Obi-Wan. I always feel so safe with you. But ... I wouldn't mind feeling some other way with you, too." Anakin was blinking a lot, all of the sudden. It was not as though he hadn't thought about it, of course - marriage aside, Padme knew he had forays with other partners since their private ceremony on Naboo; she even probably knew that he'd used sex as a bargaining tool, and probably would again. It was not something their relationship had had specific boundaries set up regarding, as such, but at some point, Anakin could fuzzily recall appreciating that Padme received sexual release from her handmaidens on a fairly regular basis. Sex with anyone else was really just a placeholder until they could see each other again. And yet, it was different with Ahsoka. She was technically legal in the Core System, now, and more significantly so in the Outer Rim, where child slavery was all but commonplace, and at her age, Anakin had done much worse than sleep with (well, fuck) his Master. At the same time, there was something innocent about Ahsoka, something a bit naive that growing up in bondage on Tatooine seemed to have milked out of him. Ahsoka was spirited and cute, and Anakin wasn't sure he could forgive himself for taking that away from her. Sometimes, it was nice to have her sunny outlook when things were otherwise very grim. Sensing his hesitance, Ahsoka, in a true act of desperation, shoved her hands underneath her breasts, lifting them up as if in offering. For good measure, she thumbed her nipples, and Anakin could see her bite her lip as the feeling traveled to her groin. "Mmf," she offered, and then smiled meekly at him. It took Anakin two long strides to reach the tub. He kneeled carefully in front of it, and in front of the tiny Togruta girl who looked at him excitedly as if she had gotten her way. Unable to resist completely, Anakin reached out with his real hand and cupped one of her breasts, and then the other, flicking at Ahsoka's nipples a few times. She moaned at him wantonly, and Anakin could see her spread her legs in the water slightly. He smiled and stroked her cheek. "You're very pretty, Snips," he murmured, and Ahsoka's smile flagged a little as she seemed to brace herself for disappointment. "I just ... can't do it yet. I'm sorry. I just don't think you're ready yet." Ahsoka's eyes were wide, and Anakin was terrified that she would start crying. "I thought that you thought I was a good Padawan," she said, her voice nary above a whisper. "Did I do something wrong?" "Of course not," Anakin assured her. He moved his hands away, not wanting her to continue getting the wrong idea. "when the time is right," he offered again vaguely; "When you're ready, I will be ready." He stood and walked towards the door. Ahsoka harrumphed. "So when will that be?" she demanded, a tiny bit sexually charged at this point, and more than a little frustrated at what she perceived as her Master's apathy.
- First, I love learning about different industries and commodities, how they developed over time, often over millennia, shaping world markets and modern political economies (e.g. cotton, gold, salt, cod, petroleum). “The Fish” provides a fascinating introduction to the world of bananas, a fruit that every American today knows and most of whom love on their breakfast cereal or as a mid-day, nutritious snack. Only, as I learned, bananas aren’t actually a fruit and little more than a century ago they were far from common, but rather quite exotic, a true luxury, displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition to crowds of gawking onlookers as if it came from another planet. Indeed, according to the author, a banana in 1900 was as unusual to the average American as an African cucumber is today. There’s a lot about the very familiar banana that I never knew. For instance, Cohen explains that the banana tree is actually the world’s largest herb, and thus its offspring, the banana, are technically berries. Even more fascinating, bananas grow from rhizomes, not seeds. In other words, cut appendages continue to grow, replicating the original. As Cohen describes it: “When you look at a banana, you’re looking at every banana, an infinite regression. There are no mutts, only the first fruit of a particular species and billions of copies. Every banana is a clone, in other words, a replica of an ur-banana that weighed on its stalk the first morning of man.” Believe it or not, the story of the banana gets even crazier. If you’ve ever wondered why old black-and-white films joked about slipping on a banana peel even though the banana peel that you’ve long known doesn’t feel particularly slippery, that’s because we have completely different bananas today. In the early nineteenth century, Americans were introduced to the “Big Mike,” a variety of banana that went extinct in 1965. It was bigger, tastier and more robust than the bananas we have today, according to Cohen, and their peels were far more slippery. The bananas we eat today are known as “Cavendish,” their primary benefit being immunity to the Panama disease that wiped out the Big Mike. Again, because bananas are all exact genetic copies, they are highly susceptible to rapid eradication from disease. Second, I’m a sucker for a great rags-to-riches story. The tale of Samuel Zemurray delivers that in spades. He arrived in America in 1891, a penniless Jew from what today is Moldova, and settled in the Deep South. (It may surprise many Americans but the South was far more hospitable to Jews for most our history. For instance, Jefferson Davis had two Jews in his Cabinet; Lincoln had none.) While still in his teens Zemurray recognized a business opportunity where other only saw trash: the ripe bananas that Boston Fruit discarded along the rail line in Mobile, Alabama before shipping off to Chicago and other northern metropolitan destinations. Zemurray was a natural entrepreneur; he had no particular affinity for bananas, it was just the opportunity at hand. “If he had settled in Chicago,” Cohen writes, “it would have been beef; if Pittsburgh, steel; if L.A., movies.” Zemurray quickly turned one man’s trash into cash, renting a boxcar to carry the castoff bananas along the slow rail route through the South, selling his cargo to local merchants at each Podunk rail stop until either his inventory ran out or spoiled. From such humble beginnings did a great international trading company eventually take root, Cuyamel Fruit, named after the river separating Honduras and Guatemala, the heartland of banana growing. By 1925, Cuyamel Fruit Company, the creation of an upstart Jewish immigrant banana jobber, had emerged as a serious threat to United Fruit, the undisputed king of the industry, a company that was led by Boston’s best, the sons of Brahmins. The threat was not because of Cuyamel’s size. In most ways United Fruit still dominated its aggressive rival (i.e. United Fruit was harvesting 40 million bunches a year with 150,000 employees and working capital of $27m, compared to Cuyamel’s 8 million bunches, 10,000 employees and $3m in working capital). The threat was that Cuyamel was a better run business and more innovative, leading the way with selective pruning, drainage, silting, staking and overhead irrigation. “U.F. was a conglomerate, a collection of firms bought up and slapped together,” Cohen writes. Cuyamel, by contrast, was a well-oiled machine, vertically integrated and led from the front by Zemurray, the ultimate owner-manager-worker. Cuyamel’s success was certainly no accident. It was the product of hard work, an obsessed owner-operator who understood his business at a visceral level, a skill earned over decades of hard, unglamorous work. Zemurray adhered to his own, classically American immigrant code of conduct: “get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and the blood in your eyes.” Cohen describes his commitment and ultimate advantage this way: “Zemurray worked in the fields beside his engineers, planters, and machete men. He was deep in the muck, sweat covered, swinging a blade. He helped map the plantations, plant the rhizomes, clear the weeds, lay the track…unlike most of his competitors, he understood every part of the business, from the executive suite where the stock was manipulated to the ripening room where the green fruit turned yellow…By the time he was forty, he had served in every position from fruit jobber to boss. He worked on the docks, on the ships and railroads, in the fields and warehouses. He had ridden the mules. He had managed the fruit and money, the mercenaries and government men. He understood the meaning of every change in the weather, the significance of every date on the calendar.” Indeed, dedicated immigrants like Sam Zemurray have made America great. There’s nothing wrong with doing grunt work. In fact, it’s essential. United Fruit bought out Cuyamel in the early days of the stock market crash of 1929, when the former had a market share of 54% to the latter’s 14%. United Fruit’s profit was some $45m and its stock price $108. By 1932, profit was down to $6m and the stock languished at $10.25. “The company was caught in a death spiral,” according to Cohen. By January 1933, Zemurray used his massive stake and proxy votes to take over the company, claiming “I realized that the greatest mistake the United Fruit management had made was to assume it could run its activities in many tropical countries from an office on the 10th floor of a Boston office building.” The immigrant with dirt under his nails and a rumbled jacket knew the business better than the Ivy Leaguers with manicures and pinstriped suits. Indeed, the fish (Cuyamel Fruit) was swallowing the whale (United Fruit). Zemurray would run the company until 1951, arguably the most successful years of its history. In 1950, the company cleared $66m in profit. By 1960, profits would fall to just $2m. United Fruit collapsed, eventually restructuring and reinventing itself as Chiquita Brands, based in Cincinnati. When Zemurray started in the industry at the turn of the century, bananas were curiosities, a sidebar trade, something for the rich. By the time he retired, bananas were part of the daily American fabric, the interests of the industry consistent with that of political leadership in Washington. Indeed, some of the most illustrious and powerful men in government had close connections to United Fruit during the Zemurray era: CIA director Allen Dulles (member of the board of directors), secretary of state John Foster Dulles (U.F. legal counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell), New Deal fixer Tom Corcoran (paid lobbyist), UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (large shareholder), among others. By the 1950s, Cohen writes, “it was hard to tell where the government ended and the company began.” At its height, Cohen says, United Fruit was “as ubiquitous as Google and as feared as Halliburton.” For anyone interested in business history, American politics in Central America or the development of the global fruit industry, “The Fish that Ate the Whale” is a book to own and savor. Read less