Word: 20th
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...history, Paraguay has been almost a caricature of the right-wing South American military republic. Its infamous 19th-century dictator, General Francisco Solano Lopez had his own mother flogged in public and then made the nation's Roman Catholic bishops declare him a saint; its equally villainous 20th-century tyrant, General Alfredo Stroessner, turned the country into a haven for Nazi war criminals. Ever since, Paraguay has struggled to be seen as something more than a benighted agricultural backwater wedged between Brazil and Argentina...
...wars and upheavals of the 20th century have largely destroyed the nomadic herding cultures that created these wonderful rugs. And although the Antiques Roadshow hasn't shown up in Damascus yet, the heavy hand of globalization has almost finished scouring the souks of Syria for all that is old and good, and shipped it off for sale in antiseptic showrooms in London, New York, and Dubai. The rugs offered to you in the souks of the Middle East are almost certainly the best you will ever see, artifacts from a time when humans made things of meaning and value...
...expert in nuclear fission who taught at Princeton and the University of Texas and authored five books, physicist John Wheeler--who coined the term black hole--was involved in many of the major scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. As a member of the Manhattan Project, he collaborated with Albert Einstein and others to create the atom bomb. Unlike some colleagues who agonized over the weapon's awful power, he regretted only that it hadn't been used sooner. He often recalled a letter from his brother, who was later killed in World War II, that read simply, "Hurry...
...ideas into economics, Laibson said. Psychological concepts that Kahneman has applied to economics include prospect theory, heuristics and biases, hedonics, and the two-system theory of intuition and reasoning. After the presentation, Laibson described Kahneman as “among the handful of most influential economic contributors in the 20th century.” For the two remaining lectures, Kahneman will speak on decision-making and rationality this evening and on evolving notions of well-being tomorrow...
...railroads the facts. Economist Thomas Sowell recounts reality in his book, “Economic Facts and Fallacies.” Today, African Americans have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the country, and lower labor force participation rates than whites. At the turn of the 20th century, however, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites. They also had higher labor force participation rates than whites in every census from 1890 to 1950. The problems that Obama cites are recent trends, not ancestral legacies...