Where did that come from, he thinks. Ah, We're the card house now. There's never a situation where one card is threatened, the others left in peace; they're all threatened together and at once.

The boss won’t let us follow our normal procedures because he thinks it will take too long, so we’re effectively working with one hand tied behind our backs.

Moreover (contra conspiracy-theoretic paranoia), the financial or political knowledge of even those with the most questionable motives and the greatest power is finite.

The tin cylinder, filled with iron balls, which is fired from our smooth-bored guns, was unsuitable for a rifled gun, because the breaking up of such a projectile in the bore was likely to injure the rifling. Then again, lead balls could not well be substituted for iron ones on account of their liability to conglomerate or adhere together in lumps.