Word: argumentative
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...race has begun. Asks Gregg Easterbrook in a recent New Republic piece on SUVs: "Can it be a coincidence that road rage started to become a national concern in the mid-1990s, just as these pharaonic contraptions began flooding the roads?" (Perhaps he's right, but Easterbrook hurts his argument when he suggests SUV drivers have "serious psychological problems...
Consumer groups and auto executives may spar over the mixed safety profile of SUVs, but there's less argument about the vehicles' environmental impact. It's simple math: SUVs are heavier than cars, so they take more gas to go the same distance. And burning more gas releases more garbage into the air. According to the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists, 2001-model SUVs, pickups and minivans emitted 2.4 times as much smog-forming nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons as cars and 1.4 times as much tailpipe carbon dioxide (a global-warming gas) as cars. The Natural Resources Defense Council says...
...This argument is a little too convenient, because there's little automakers are expected to do about fuel prices. And it's unlikely that cheap gas really bothers the industry, since the most gas-gorging SUVs have had huge profit margins. Until the recent economic slump and the new era of 0% financing, buyers were willing to pay a premium for autos that aren't very difficult to build. "Take a normal sedan or truck, and just whoosh--blow some air into it--and add a little dimension off the ground," says Nissan's Hirshberg, who designed the Pathfinder. Manufacturers...
...first and last word - when viewers pay most attention - to the government side. More worryingly, several popular talk-show hosts have had their slots canceled after Berlusconi publicly criticized them. Even Ghezzi himself was censored, when RAI pulled the plug on a Blob special series featuring only Berlusconi. The argument was that the show presented one-sided satire. Ghezzi reveled in the fact that undoctored clips of Berlusconi alone were considered satire. "It was the ultimate triumph," he says. Yet Ghezzi wonders if eventually Berlusconi's media control will hurt him. When the public sees too much of a politician...
...seems absurd that one would even have to do a study to prove the common sense view that the privacy argument has no legs,” said Heather K. Gerken, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School...