Word: bettering
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...here's my assessment: So what? A recession is defined by the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the semiofficial arbiter of such matters, as a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy." It's certainly better for economic activity to be increasing rather than decreasing, but the focus on whether the economy is in recession or not can miss a lot. "I don't care about what the dating committee says. I'm concerned about longer-term issues," says Yale economist Robert Shiller. "We are in for an extended period of subnormal...
...produce tears with equal, unforced agility. And with Julia Roberts' four-year break from starring roles (until this spring's Duplicity), Bullock is the one enduring star actress of her age. All this stokes a rooting interest in film folk and audiences alike. They just wish she were in better movies...
...even include the energy we fritter away through wasteful behavior like leaving lights on or idling cars. We're on course to increase electricity usage an extra 30% by 2030, which could require trillions of dollars' worth of new emissions-belching power plants, so it would be much better to eliminate the usage that doesn't add to our quality of life...
...contrast, not everyone realizes that we use too much health care; most of us assume that more treatment is better, that the best doctors are the ones who do the most to us, that our health costs are the world's highest because our health care is the world's most thorough. But a slew of research by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice has found that as much as 30% of our annual $2 trillion-plus medical bill may be wasted on unnecessary care, mostly run-of-the-mill diagnostic tests, office visits, hospital stays, minor...
...sales volumes, electricity use has been flat. Instead of an incentive to sell more power and build more generating plants, the utilities had an incentive to help their customers save electricity and avoid the need for new generating plants. So that's what they did. Energy providers were much better than the government at influencing the behaviors of energy consumers. "That's what we need in health care," says Dr. Elliott Fisher of the Dartmouth Institute. "When providers get rewarded for volume, they provide volume. That's got to change." (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...