Word: act
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...classical-music conductor taking the podium always becomes a peacemaker of sorts. The central mission of conducting, after all, is to dispel discord and bring dozens of competing voices into concert. The Israeli maestro Daniel Barenboim, 65, sees in this act the opportunity to bring a deeper kind of harmony to one of the most violent and vociferous regions in the world: the Middle East...
Barenboim insists these concerts are not political. If the orchestra has a purpose in the Middle East peace process, it is to act as a metaphor for the possible. The young musicians live surrounded by walls and boundaries. Their political views are profoundly different--but they nonetheless come together in a common theme...
...secret of Riccardi's technique is to see peacemaking not as bargaining but as an act of conversion, transforming a person who was your enemy into a mere political opponent. That's hardly the making of an alliance, but it does get adversaries talking--and that can keep them from shooting. When the technique works, even the most barbarous of characters may show a flicker of decency. On March 28 the government of Uganda signed a Sant'Egidio-negotiated peace treaty in which the warlord Joseph Kony agreed to come out of the bush and be tried before a jury...
...University of Chicago professors sketch a new approach to public policy that takes into account the odd realities of human behavior, like the deep and unthinking tendency to conform, even in areas--like energy consumption--where conformity is irrelevant. For 30 years, Thaler has documented the ways people act illogically: we eat more from larger plates, care twice as much about losing money as about gaining it, fret over rare events like plane crashes instead of common ones like car accidents. That research underpins Nudge's argument that as policymakers go about their jobs--whether regulating the mortgage industry...
...during which several big New York City banks actually did fail--led to the creation of the Federal Reserve. The Great Depression, unleashed by a market crash and countless bank runs, gave us the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Glass-Steagall Act separating banks from Wall Street. Now we're up to our elbows in another mess, albeit one that has yet to acquire a name for the ages. (Credit crunch? Subprime meltdown? Give me a break!) And so, as foreclosure follows reset subprime loan, talk has turned to the need for sweeping changes...