Word: bigs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With its awful name and convoluted rules, the cash-for-clunkers program might well have been a flop, yet it turned into a surprising success, even inspiring many of its critics to call for an additional $2 billion in funding. One big reason: the program boosted July 2009 sales of new cars and trucks, giving the economy a bit of a lift...
...paid off. When she introduces you to, say, Paterson's Jacob Have I Loved, with its depiction of sisterly jealousy as a "painful, enduring state," she convinces you that your 12-year-old self needed that book. And makes you wish you could have palled around with this opinionated, big-hearted fiction lover. Presuming she ever put her book down...
...China's economic development, commodity-price data could be considered vital and sensitive information, says Joshua Rosenzweig, Hong Kong--based manager for the Dui Hua Foundation, a human-rights group. "The success of China's economy is tied up with the legitimacy of the government in a very big way," he notes. Foreign mining companies--very much including Australian ones--have profited greatly by feeding China's ravenous appetite for raw materials. But recently, wild fluctuations in commodity prices and friction over trade deals have increased tension between overseas iron-ore suppliers and China's steel producers. The arrests came...
...Historical destinies are directional, not precisely preordained. History runs in cycles, but how well or badly we respond as individuals and a society to those cyclical shifts - such as the big one we're experiencing now - is up to us. Both my middle-aged sense of history and hardwired American hopefulness make me more optimistic than pessimistic - but just barely - about the present reset. I suppose it wouldn't be a catastrophe if my children, when they reach middle age, are living in an America that has become a supersized Britain. But I'd prefer to think of them growing...
...while Tokyo's major investment goal may be practical, robotics is also prestigious, giving Japan's big technology companies a global showcase for their cutting-edge research capabilities. Honda devoted millions of dollars towards the development of its first walking humanoid ASIMO "with no hope of direct commercial success," says Noel Sharkey, a robotics professor at the University of Sheffield. The exercise both "shows that they are technological leaders," Sharkey says, and gives Honda a chance to "reward the very best engineers in the company by placing them on the ASIMO team." (Read about robots in the U.S. army...