Word: arens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...critic in me would like to see Best Picture nominations for foreign-language films and documentaries. But the Academy-board poobahs aren't trying to make room for more gnarly little art-house entries. They know that more people watch the Oscars in years when truly popular movies are among the finalists. The biggest ratings in the past 15 years have been when Titanic and LOTR: The Return of the King swept to victory. Ratings were up a bit this year; but if two big audience favorites, Slumdog and The Dark Knight, had gone head to head, the numbers might...
...unnecessary costs are another man's profits; lobbyists for drug- and devicemakers, hospitals, doctors and insurers are already fighting to make sure their slices of the more than $2 trillion health-care pie aren't nibbled by reform. Senate Republicans just introduced "antirationing" legislation to bar the government from using comparative-effectiveness research - "a common tool used by socialized health-care systems" - for cost control. They paused in their usual attacks on Obama's profligacy just long enough to attack his stinginess, warning that he will use evidence as an excuse to micromanage the art of medicine, stifle innovation...
...leap from there to concluding that publishers are going to perish or that Amazon wants them to. It's true that Amazon plays hardball with them, but that's partly because the online-book world - unlike the real-life Amazon - isn't particularly biodiverse yet. If publishers aren't in a position to check Amazon directly, the market is, or it will be. There will be some painful scenes while we wait for that to happen, but already Google - a company that never met a loss leader it didn't like - has announced its intention to start selling e-books...
...that doesn't mean that cuts aren't on the way. Luckily for FAS, we've discovered/made up some more creative ways to save. Take this report in the New York Times a few days...
...Resistance of Iran (NCRI) saw its moment. "This uprising is the result of 30 years of murder, oppression and corruption by an Iranian regime we've dedicated our entire lives to fighting," Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of foreign affairs for the Paris-based group told TIME. "Even if protesters aren't calling for [the NCRI] to take power, it's only natural that, given our organization's experience, our clandestine networks are playing an important role informing and assisting the Iranian people to achieve its desire of regime change...