Vehicle Delivery Quotes

A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.

Air and earth form an anthill traversed, level upon level, by roads live with traffic. Air trains, ground trains, underground trains, people mailed through tubes special-delivery, and chains of cars race along horizontally, while express elevators pump masses of people vertically from one traffic level to another; at the junctions, people leap from one vehicle to the next, instantly sucked in and snatched away by the rhythm of it, which makes a syncope, a pause, a little gap of twenty seconds during which a word might be hastily exchanged with someone else. Questions and answers synchronize like meshing gears; everyone has only certain fixed tasks.

I was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in a motorcade. It looked to me like a million police cars buzzing around the vehicle in which i, a woman in labor, was riding. And they all followed. Into Elmhurst Hospital and up to the delivery room. They surrounded the hospital.

Consider the genesis of a single-celled embryo produced by the fertilization of an egg by a sperm. The genetic material of this embryo comes from two sources: paternal genes (from sperm) and maternal genes (from eggs). But the cellular material of the embryo comes exclusively from the egg; the sperm is no more than a glorified delivery vehicle for male DNA—a genome equipped with a hyperactive tail. Aside from proteins, ribosomes, nutrients, and membranes, the egg also supplies the embryo with specialized structures called mitochondria. These mitochondria are the energy-producing factories of the cell; they are so anatomically discrete and so specialized in their function that cell biologists call them “organelles”—i.e., mini-organs resident within cells. Mitochondria, recall, carry a small, independent genome that resides within the mitochondrion itself—not in the cell’s nucleus, where the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes (and the 21,000-odd human genes) can be found. The exclusively female origin of all the mitochondria in an embryo has an important consequence. All humans—male or female—must have inherited their mitochondria from their mothers, who inherited their mitochondria from their mothers, and so forth, in an unbroken line of female ancestry stretching indefinitely into the past. (A woman also carries the mitochondrial genomes of all her future descendants in her cells; ironically, if there is such a thing as a “homunculus,” then it is exclusively female in origin—technically, a “femunculus”?) Now imagine an ancient tribe of two hundred women, each of whom bears one child. If the child happens to be a daughter, the woman dutifully passes her mitochondria to the next generation, and, through her daughter’s daughter, to a third generation. But if she has only a son and no daughter, the woman’s mitochondrial lineage wanders into a genetic blind alley and becomes extinct (since sperm do not pass their mitochondria to the embryo, sons cannot pass their mitochondrial genomes to their children). Over the course of the tribe’s evolution, tens of thousands of such mitochondrial lineages will land on lineal dead ends by chance, and be snuffed out. And here is the crux: if the founding population of a species is small enough, and if enough time has passed, the number of surviving maternal lineages will keep shrinking, and shrinking further, until only a few are left. If half of the two hundred women in our tribe have sons, and only sons, then one hundred mitochondrial lineages will dash against the glass pane of male-only heredity and vanish in the next generation. Another half will dead-end into male children in the second generation, and so forth. By the end of several generations, all the descendants of the tribe, male or female, might track their mitochondrial ancestry to just a few women. For modern humans, that number has reached one: each of us can trace our mitochondrial lineage to a single human female who existed in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago. She is the common mother of our species. We do not know what she looked like, although her closest modern-day relatives are women of the San tribe from Botswana or Namibia. I find the idea of such a founding mother endlessly mesmerizing. In human genetics, she is known by a beautiful name—Mitochondrial Eve.

When the evening meal was delivered to his cell, Aft Agley overpowered the turnkey and eluded his captors by hijacking a pastry delivery vehicle. It was a perfect escape as no cop wanted to be seen chasing after a donut truck.

She had signed her own death-warrant. He kept telling himself over and over that he was not to blame, she had brought it on herself. He had never seen the man. He knew there was one. He had known for six weeks now. Little things had told him. One day he came home and there was a cigar-butt in an ashtray, still moist at one end, still warm at the other. There were gasoline-drippings on the asphalt in front of their house, and they didn't own a car. And it wouldn't be a delivery-vehicle, because the drippings showed it had stood there a long time, an hour or more. And once he had actually glimpsed it, just rounding the far corner as he got off the bus two blocks down the other way. A second-hand Ford. She was often very flustered when he came home, hardly seemed to know what she was doing or saying at all. He pretended not to see any of these things; he was that type of man, Stapp, he didn't bring his hates or grudges out into the open where they had a chance to heal. He nursed them in the darkness of his mind. That's a dangerous kind of a man. If he had been honest with himself, he would have had to admit that this mysterious afternoon caller was just the excuse he gave himself, that he'd daydreamed of getting rid of her long before there was any reason to, that there had been something in him for years past now urging Kill, kill, kill. Maybe ever since that time he'd been treated at the hospital for a concussion. ("Three O'Clock")

Another friend said, I want to write sentences that seem as if no one wrote them. The goal being the creation of a pure delivery system, without the distraction of a style. The goal being a form no one notices, the creation of what seems like pure feeling, not of what seems like a vehicle for a feeling. Language as pure experience, pure memory. I too wanted to achieve that impossible effect.

Right on cue, the ground came whipping up beneath them. No longer simply held aloft by anti-gravity units, the vehicle’s futuristic replacements for wheels could be put to work. Bigger, beefier versions of the same things that made his delivery bike work, the repulsors used the interplay between two tangible energy fields to create a synchronized wave pattern capable of instituting temporary charge differences between the vehicle and road surface for the purposes of facilitating the attraction and repulsion necessary to maintain an approximately constant distance. In other words, he had traction now.

Nuclear posture is the incorporation of some number and type of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles state's overall military structure, the rules and procedures governing how those weapons are deployed, when and under what conditions they might be used, against what targets, and who has the authority to make those decisions. Nuclear posture is best thought of as the operational, rather than the declaratory, nuclear doctrine of a country; while the two can overlap, it is the operational doctrine that generates deterrent power against an opponent. To put it bluntly, states care more about what an adversary can credibly do with its nuclear weapons than what it says about them.

Why had the introduction of a supposedly harmless virus carrying a gene into the liver caused such a devastating, fatal reaction? As physicians, scientists, and regulators sifted through the trial, the reasons for the failed experiment became evident. The vectors used to infect Gelsinger's cells had never been properly vetted in humans. But most important, Gelsinger's immune response to the virus should have been anticipated. Gelsinger had likely been naturally exposed to the strain of adenovirus that had been used in the gene-therapy experiment. His brisk immune response was not an aberration; it was the perfectly habitual response of a body fighting a pathogen that it had previously encountered, possibly during infection by a cold. In choosing a common human virus as their vehicle for gene delivery, gene therapists had made a crucial error of judgment: they had neglected to consider that genes were being delivered into a human body with a history, with scars, memories, and prior exposures. "How could such a beautiful thing go so, so wrong?" Paul Gelsinger had asked. We now know how: because-seeking only beauty-scientists were unprepared for catastrophe. The doctors pushing the frontiers of human medicine had forgotten to account for the common cold.

Some of these bots are already arriving in 2021 in more primitive forms. Recently, when I was in quarantine at home in Beijing, all of my e-commerce packages and food were delivered by a robot in my apartment complex. The package would be placed on a sturdy, wheeled creature resembling R2-D2. It could wirelessly summon the elevator, navigate autonomously to my door, and then call my phone to announce its arrival, so I could take the package, after which it would return to reception. Fully autonomous door-to-door delivery vans are also being tested in Silicon Valley. By 2041, end-to-end delivery should be pervasive, with autonomous forklifts moving items in the warehouse, drones and autonomous vehicles delivering the boxes to the apartment complex, and the R2-D2 bot delivering the package to each home. Similarly, some restaurants now use robotic waiters to reduce human contact. These are not humanoid robots, but autonomous trays-on-wheels that deliver your order to your table. Robot servers today are both gimmicks and safety measures, but tomorrow they may be a normal part of table service for many restaurants, apart from the highest-end establishments or places that cater to tourists, where the human service is integral to the restaurant’s charm. Robots can be used in hotels (to clean and to deliver laundry, suitcases, and room service), offices (as receptionists, guards, and cleaning staff), stores (to clean floors and organize shelves), and information outlets (to answer questions and give directions at airports, hotels, and offices). In-home robots will go beyond the Roomba. Robots can wash dishes (not like a dishwasher, but as an autonomous machine in which you can pile all the greasy pots, utensils, and plates without removing leftover food, with all of them emerging cleaned, disinfected, dried, and organized). Robots can cook—not like a humanoid chef, but like an automated food processor connected to a self-cooking pot. Ingredients go in and the cooked dish comes out. All of these technology components exist now—and will be fine-tuned and integrated in the decade to come. So be patient. Wait for robotics to be perfected and for costs to go down. The commercial and subsequently personal applications will follow. By 2041, it’s not far-fetched to say that you may be living a lot more like the Jetsons!

Emissions of carbon dioxide reasonable commercial For those who do not know each other with the phrase "carbon footprint" and its consequences or is questionable, which is headed "reasonable conversion" is a fast lens here. Statements are described by the British coal climatic believe. "..The GC installed (fuel emissions) The issue has directly or indirectly affected by a company or work activities, products," only in relation to the application, especially to introduce a special procedure for the efforts of B. fight against carbon crank function What is important? Carbon dioxide ", uh, (on screen), the main fuel emissions" and the main result of global warming, improve a process that determines the atmosphere in the air in the heat as greenhouse gases greenhouse, carbon dioxide is reduced by the environment, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs more typically classified as). The consequences are disastrous in the sense of life on the planet. The exchange is described at a reasonable price in Wikipedia as "...geared a social movement and market-based procedures, especially the objectives of the development of international guidelines and improve local sustainability." The activity is for the price "reasonable effort" as well as social and environmental criteria as part of the same in the direction of production. It focuses exclusively on exports under the auspices of the acquisition of the world's nations to coffee most international destinations, cocoa, sugar, tea, vegetables, wine, specially designed, refreshing fruits, bananas, chocolate and simple. In 2007 trade, the conversion of skilled gross sales serious enough alone suffered due the supermarket was in the direction of approximately US $ 3.62 billion to improve (2.39 million), rich environment and 47% within 12 months of the calendar year. Fair trade is often providing 1-20% of gross sales in their classification of medicines in Europe and North America, the United States. ..Properly Faith in the plan ... cursed interventions towards closing in failure "vice president Cato Industries, appointed to inquire into the meaning of fair trade Brink Lindsey 2003 '. "Sensible changes direction Lindsay inaccurate provides guidance to the market in a heart that continues to change a design style and price of the unit complies without success. It is based very difficult, and you must deliver or later although costs Rule implementation and reduces the cost if you have a little time in the mirror. You'll be able to afford the really wide range plan alternatives to products and expenditures price to pay here. With the efficient configuration package offered in the interpretation question fraction "which is a collaboration with the Carbon Fund worldwide, and acceptable substitute?" In the statement, which tend to be small, and more? They allow you to search for carbon dioxide transport and delivery. All vehicles are responsible dioxide pollution, but they are the worst offenders? Aviation. Quota of the EU said that the greenhouse gas jet fuel greenhouse on the basis of 87% since 1990 years Boeing Company, Boeing said more than 5 747 liters of fuel burns kilometer. Paul Charles, spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, said flight CO² gas burned in different periods of rule. For example: (. The United Kingdom) Jorge Chavez airport to fly only in the vast world of Peru to London Heathrow with British Family Islands 6.314 miles (10162 km) works with about 31,570 liters of kerosene, which produces changes in only 358 for the incredible carbon. Delivery. John Vidal, Environment Editor parents argue that research on the oil company BP and researchers from the Department of Physics and the environment in Germany Wising said that about once a year before the transport height of 600 to 800 million tons. This is simply nothing more than twice in Colombia and more than all African nations spend together.

two flatbed tow trucks lumbered down the driveway. Each with a covered vehicle on the back. They pulled up in front of the house and positioned themselves to unload the vehicles. The man in the first truck got out and said, “This Stargazer Ranch?” Jack replied, “Yeah.” “You the owner, Jack Turner?” “Yeah.” “Delivery’s for you, man.” Jack and Caleb came off the porch, staring at the trucks and the man. “Whose cars are these?” “Yours. Sign here, please.” Jack signed and the man got out two pink slips. “Who gets the Camaro?” Caleb and Jack looked at each other blankly. “She didn’t,” Caleb blurted. “If the she you’re referring to goes by Jenna Caldwell, then yes, she did,” the delivery man said. “Uh, the Camaro is mine, I guess.” Jack couldn’t believe it. She bought him a car. “Okay, sign here.” Jack did and took the pink slip. “Is the Mustang for you?” the delivery man asked Caleb. Caleb opened his mouth, closed it, then said still unsure, “Uh, yeah, I guess it is.” “Sign here and we’ll get them unloaded.” “Jack, she bought me a car. Why did she buy me a car?” Stunned, they could only stare. “This can’t be real. People don’t buy other people cars. Not like this.” “I don’t know. She bought me one, too,” Jack said, dumbfounded. -Deliveryman, Jack, & Caleb

The central police station of the governorate of Qasr el-Nil looked like the poorly maintained palace of a deceased sheikh. Protected by tall black fences, its dark facade opened onto a garden containing a mix of palm trees and police vehicles, which seemed more like grocers’ delivery vans. Only the large blue two-note revolving lights showed the difference. In front of a long staircase, six military guards—each with white short-sleeved shirt, kepi bearing the insignia of an eagle stamped with the national flag, Misr assault rifle across the shoulder—slapped the edge of their hands against their chests at the exit of a corpulent man endowed with three stars on his epaulettes.

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Innovation within services like CompuServe took place at the center of the network rather than at its fringes. PCs were to be only the delivery vehicles for data sent to customers, and users were not themselves expected to program or to be able to receive services from anyone other than their central service provider. CompuServe depended on the phone network’s physical layer generativity to get the last mile to a subscriber’s house, but CompuServe as a service was not open to third-party tinkering.

This book’s body is inextricably linked to her experience of reading it. I hope that she continues to hold on to it, because as long as she does, its wavy, expanded pages will remind her of the hot day she read it with her feet in the water—and of the fourteen-year-old she was at the time. A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents, and from my perspective, this fair was a concentrated celebration of that fact.

It was tradition, albeit a bad one, in mechanized units, to steal and hoard spare parts. It was certainly tempting. Possessing extra parts gave a driver or unit the ability to repair a vehicle rapidly, without going through the Army Repair Parts system with its paperwork and time lag for delivery. For a commander, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant better vehicle readiness reporting - a positive metric of performance. For a solider, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant finishing work earlier and having more time off. In countless movies over the years, Hollywood glamorized the "scrounger" who could come up with scarce parts quickly. But Graney knew it killed the system we ultimately depended on, and he taught us why. Besides the obvious theft involved, stealing or hoarding parts meant vehicles were fixed without forcing the repair system to work. The more we went around it, the less responsible it was. It was basic, but getting the basics right was Graney's brilliance.

And here is where we could see the emergence of new types of companies—“Auto-Tech.” These would either be vertically integrated or strategically allied companies, from vehicle manufacture, to fleet management, to ride hailing through their own platforms. They would be the master coordinators of multiple capabilities—manufacturing, data and supply chain management, machine learning, software and systems integration, and the delivery of high-quality “mobility as a service” to customers around the world. At this point, there is still no tipping point where the benefits of new technology and business models prove so overwhelming that they obliterate the oil-fueled personal car model that has reigned for so long.

Bimmer Motors is the automotive specialty shop in the Brooklyn, NY area that Mercedes owners can trust. With decades of experience, we know how to take care of your vehicle.

Managers know that software development follows Parkinson's Law: Work will expand to fill the time allotted to it. If you are in the software business, perhaps you are familiar with a corollary to Parkinson called the Ninety-Ninety Rule, attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs: "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." This self-deprecating rule says that when the engineers have written 90% of the code, they still don't know where they are! Management knows full well that the programmers won't hit their stated ship dates, regardless of what dates it specifies. The developers work best under pressure, and management uses the delivery date as the pressure-delivery vehicle.

In Modern world internet technology is getting advance day by day. Uship is also getting advance day by day. This script helps the customer to find a way to book their shipment online. Uship clone script is a script. Which helps the customer to find a way to book their shipment online? Uship clone script is very easy to use. As an admin customer can use this script to start his own online business to help other customer’s to give the way for booking their shipment online. Anyone can use this script. This script is available for all World Wide Web customers. It also provides you 365*24*7 customer support. Uship clone script basic server installation is free. Customer can store unlimited data with the help of this script. In this script there are two sections available. First admin dashboard and second one is Master Control. In this service customer can check in which country our service is available or not. As an admin customer can add city or state in which the service should be available or not. In this script customer can check full detail info for example like: - Receiver detail, pickup dates, delivery dates and shipment details. Admin Dashboard: - As an admin customer can cheq. How many users are registered in a day? In shipment active and shipment undelivered option as an admin customer can cheq how much shipment delivered and undelivered are available in a day or week. In payment option customer can cheq how many payments received or not received in a week. As an admin customer can check all Web enquires which is received by customer through E-mail. In this active or inactive quote option admin can manage all transporter posted shipment quote, admin can make active or inactive quote. Master Control: - section there is some different option available for example likes category, payment gateways, Add Vehicle, Add notice board, country list, mails template, news list and so many other options are available. In add notice board option any customer can any notice regarding the product and in show notice board option customer can check all kinds of notice. There is news section on frontend where customer can add news about your company. What’s new or what are you doing and know you clients or visitors about your company. In payment gateway info option admin can manage payment gateway settings. In the admin panel customer can see payment status of all users. In slider setting admin can manage front slider banner and also admin can change slider, image text. In this script there is one service option available. In this option customer can check what Kind of service facilities available. In this script customer needs to enter a consignment detail with online tracking feature and then customer get his own complete website. Uship clone script also provide you a all static pages like Home, About Us, privacy policy, Term and condition, New shipment, Find delivers, login, My account and contact us.

This is the day,” Tarik Abdul Muhammad announced softly, looking down the line of vehicles—five blacked-out SUVs bracketed by a utility van in the fore and a white delivery van at the rear. Carrying the faithful into battle. “The day we illustrate once and for all the impotence of the crusader war machine—bring the war home to their soil. Show them that nowhere are they safe from the justice of God, whose precepts they have defied for so long.

The only way the talk can truly soar is if you take your ego out of it and let yourself be a delivery vehicle for the ideas themselves.

The internet may be mankind’s greatest tool, but it’s also our most dangerous gateway to behavioral addiction. With cell phones being its most potent delivery vehicle. Now we have a wide variety of addictive products and activities that never existed before. Online pornography. Texting and emails. Virtual reality. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Cable and internet news that never sleeps. Video games. Numerous streaming services with endless bingeable offerings. “And advertisements. Everywhere. Finely tuned to your exact interests. Chasing you wherever you roam.

Compared to a conventional debt instrument, what makes securitization so attractive is the fact that the airline often retains the junior tranches. These become an asset on its balance sheet. Any discount associated with the low credit rating of these layers is more than offset by the discount on the purchase of the aircraft, thereby creating an immediate profit and cash inflow on delivery of the aircraft. Such are the wonders of modern financial alchemy. Under good, even normal, business conditions, the airline makes lease payments to the securitization vehicle. But in a recession or a bankruptcy filing, when payments are suspended, the owners of the senior strata are able to seize the collateral. The junior participants in the securitization have no rights, and any such assets on the airline’s balance sheet must be written down to zero, further increasing the airline’s losses. By this clever piece of financial engineering, the airline gets shiny new planes for an extremely low cost of funds–recently as low as 6 per cent–while equity shareholders carry nearly all of the business risk. That an industry which has rarely earned an acceptable return on capital should have access to such cheap capital is quite astonishing.

Morelli was like the post office. He always delivered. If the delivery vehicle ran out of gas, there was no need to panic. Morelli had battery backup.

Driving University: Listen to audio books or financial news radio while stuck in traffic. Traffic nuisances transformed to education. Exercise University: Absorb books, podcasts, and magazines while exercising at the gym. In between sets, on the treadmill, or on the stationary bike, exercise is transformed to education. Waiting University: Bring something to read with you when you anticipate a painful wait: Airports, doctor’s offices, and your state’s brutal motor vehicle department. Don’t sit there and twiddle your thumbs—learn! Toilet University: Never throne without reading something of educational value. Extend your “sit time” (even after you finish) with the intent of learning something new, every single day. Toilet University is the best place to change your oil, since it occurs daily and the time expenditure cannot be avoided. This means the return on your time investment is infinite! Toilet time transformed to education. Jobbing University: If you can, read during work downtimes. During my dead-job employment (driving limos, pizza delivery) I enjoyed significant “wait times” between jobs. While I waited for passengers, pizzas, and flower orders, I read. I didn’t sit around playing pocket-poker; no, I read. If you can exploit dead time during your job, you are getting paid to learn. Dead-end jobs transformed to education. TV-Time University: Can’t wean yourself off the TV? No problem; put a television near your workspace and simultaneously work your Fastlane plan while the TV does its thing. While watching countless reruns of Star Trek, boldly going where no man has gone before, I simultaneously learned how to program websites. In fact, as I write this, I am watching the New Orleans Saints pummel the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. Gridiron gluttony transformed to work and education.

In the management of cancer, a big problem with traditional methods has been that the patient can perceive the treatment as almost worse than the disease, since the chemicals given to attack the cancer cells also attack many other types of cell. In the frontline of cancer drug development today is a sophisticated range of drugs with names ending in ‘mab’, standing for monoclonal antibody. One half of the therapeutic molecule is an antibody against specific proteins on the surface of the target cancer cells and the other half is an enzyme. (This strategy relies on the surprising fact that, often, if the genes for two proteins are joined end to end, they successfully encode an enlarged protein combining both functions—i.e. both halves still fold successfully.) When this delivery vehicle reaches its destination, the whole molecule is taken up into the cells. The other half, chemically attached to the antibody, is the enzyme ‘warhead’ that inflicts the damage. The enzyme itself could be one that, for example, attacks the cells’ nucleic acids.

An Alternative to Goals A reporter once asked an official from Toyota whether the company achieved “six sigma” quality—a defect rate of around 3 in a million and also the name of a quality improvement methodology that is currently fashionable. His answer typifies the Boyd approach to goals: Basically, I would say that because of our evolutionary concept, whatever we were doing becomes the benchmark for what we do next. We hold onto what we were doing so that it becomes maintainable and it is the new steady state.140 This may seem like a masterwork of obfuscation, but it is entirely consistent with Toyota’s overall guiding concept: The Toyota Production System, quite simply, is about shortening the time it takes to convert customer orders into vehicle deliveries.141 This is one of the best vision / focusing statements in the world of business. Instead of setting arbitrary goals, it tells everybody who works for Toyota that whenever they are in doubt about what to do, take the action that will reduce customer-to-delivery span time. It sets a direction, not a goal, since wherever we are this year, we will be better next year.

To date, most things that I’ve seen use the internet as a delivery vehicle for old style teaching. We’re taking steps in the direction — it’ll be a long, iterative process — to create new kinds of educational experiences by using this new tool of the internet.

Our staff members have an unyielding commitment to service delivery that can only be described as outstanding. We have very high customer service standards that can be felt throughout the organization. We are not only focused on playing our part in the auto body repair industry, we are determined to be the industry leaders. We do this by implementing the most cutting edge technology when it comes to auto body repair. Our state – of – the – art auto repair centers are run by friendly staff who offer the best service through certified techs who do not rest until your vehicle is in pristine condition.

The first purchase order from the army for 900 canvas-topped Gypsies came in January 1991 and the vehicles were to be delivered before 31 March of that year. Maruti manufactured the vehicles and they were parked for inspection in the factory. Army rules required that each vehicle be inspected by their own inspectors. The inspecting team would check only seven or eight vehicles in a day. It was obviously impossible to complete inspection of 900 vehicles in the time available. The inspection agency would not accept our submission that the vehicles were mass produced, following a well-documented system for quality control, and that sample checking should be adequate. They would also generally not accept Maruti’s explanation that what were being pointed out as defects were not really defects. As was foreseen, the delivery date expired before the bulk of the vehicles had been inspected. Once that happened, inspections stopped. The purchase order had to be revalidated before the remaining vehicles could be inspected. The process of revalidation took another nine to ten months. In the meantime, the vehicles were standing in the open in the factory, braving the elements. The system was not concerned about the consequences. K. Kumar made several visits to the army headquarters and met officers at various levels, to explain the Maruti-SMC system for ensuring uniformity of quality and adherence to specifications. He pleaded for expediting the process of inspection, but in vain. Kumar and I then met Lt. Gen. M.S. Bhullar, who was director general quality assurance in the army, and pointed out that exposure to the sun and rain would damage the vehicles and neither Maruti nor the army was gaining by rigidly following tortuous government procedures. Quality, I argued, was produced, not inspected and suggested that the army work out some less cumbersome methods of inspection. But the army was not willing to accept this point of view.

In November 2003, an underwater “SEAL delivery vehicle” deployed from the submarine USS Dallas (SSN-700) and entered Somali waters. The clandestine SEAL mission was the first of a dozen to install specialized cameras called Cardinals, which would monitor the coastline.

The possibility of a seamless network of electrified robo-taxis, self-driving delivery vehicles, and public transit linked to smartphone applications might seem like science fiction, but the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020 gave a flavor of what is to come. In China’s pandemic epicenter of Wuhan, unmanned, autonomous electric vehicles, monitored remotely from a computer screen in a different location, were used to deliver hospital supplies, to disinfect isolation areas, and to deliver meals to quarantined people.