Word: concept
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Remember those defined-benefit programs through which companies promised a certain amount every month to retirees? The market crash may be dealing that already waning concept a final, fatal blow. A new report from Goldman Sachs' Global Markets Institute illustrates that massive equity losses have resulted in S&P 500 companies' pension funds, which had been overfunded at the start of the year, fading so fast that they are now underfunded as a group. Instead of holding 108% of the assets they were promising to provide to retirees, they now hold just 91% (and falling...
...Booker Prize--winning novelists, and that's what makes Payback--equal parts philosophical essay, literary criticism and historical narrative--a compelling project from the start. The author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin examines the science of give-and-take, from evolution (studies of chimpanzees' innate concept of fair play) to religion (themes of redemption in Christian theology) to literature--where Atwood realizes that debt drives many a plot (Vanity Fair, A Christmas Carol). And what happens when, she asks, "people don't pay their debts? Or can't pay their debts? Or won't pay their...
Veganism is an extreme form of vegetarianism, and though the term was coined in 1944, the concept of flesh-avoidance can be traced back to ancient Indian and eastern Mediterranean societies. Vegetarianism is first mentioned by the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras of Samos around 500 BCE. In addition to his theorem about right triangles, Pythagoras promoted benevolence among all species, including humans. Followers of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism also advocated vegetarianism, believing that humans should not inflict pain on other animals...
...back then: World War I was thoroughly behind them, radio had been invented, and automobiles were growing cheaper and more popular. Sure, the disparity between the rich and the poor had widened within the past decade, but Americans could now buy goods on installment plans - a relatively new concept - and families could afford more than ever before. Stocks were on a tear: between 1924 and 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average quadrupled. At that time, it was the longest bull market ever recorded; some thought it would last forever. In the fall of 1929, economist Irving Fisher announced that "stock...
...Rwanda and Srebrenica. The most striking current example of R2P in effect is in Darfur, where the U.N. has agreed to deploy 26,000 peacekeepers to end genocide. It is a mission that, if fully staffed, would supercede that in the D.R.C. as the biggest in the world. "The concept is focused on mass atrocity crimes," says Gareth Evans, who heads global-conflict watchdog the International Crisis Group and who launched a book, Responsibility to Protect, in Washington on Tuesday. "The whole point is to develop an international reflex response that goes, 'Of course we have to do something...