Word: contrarians
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...that gets to the heart of the problem: Most Iraqis do not support the insurgency, but they are increasingly estranged from the occupation. Opinion surveys, to the extent that these are reliable in a society where expressing contrarian opinions has been to court death, find that a majority want the Americans to stay, but they can't understand why a power that was able to vaporize Saddam's regime within three weeks has been unable to guarantee the electricity supply to Baghdad. They want their immediate problems addressed, and they want to see a clear timetable and program for restoring...
...this was largely the fault of a whacked-out world. After the release of 1997's OK Computer (voted best album of the 20th century by the slightly presentist readers of England's Q magazine), Radiohead appeared to become the band--and the brand--of a certain kind of contrarian chic. If you were smart, cool and worried about the world, nothing broadcast it quicker than some casually scattered Radiohead discs. Yorke blames the forces of commerce for making him feel like a cartoon. "Ultimately you get to a point--Coldplay's a good example right now--where no matter...
...entered Harvard the pessimistic cynic and leave this week little reformed. By sophomore year, I had acquired the nickname “anti-” since I frequently and immediately attacked my roommates’ ideas and would invariably take up a contrarian viewpoint in any conversation (one roommate even started to find amusement in proposing outlandish ideas just to see me get riled up). Garnering such an ugly nickname did make me self-conscious of my potential for unpleasantness and moderated my open cynicism, but it didn’t effect any radical shifts in my disposition...
...expansive office overlooking downtown Montgomery, Ala., David Bronner talks enthusiastically about his investments: in an airline just reorganized after bankruptcy, a chain of luxury golf resorts and a group of television stations. Is he a gunslinging Sunbelt entrepreneur in the mold of Ted Turner? A hedge-fund manager? A contrarian private-equity investor? Not even close. Bronner, 58, is, in his own words, "a government bureaucrat"--the chief executive of Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA), the pension fund for 290,000 state workers and retirees. An unabashed cheerleader for Alabama who is comfortable in the spotlight, Bronner is overturning...
...Buffett has been busy buying private companies, including The Pampered Chef, a kitchenware retailer, and apparel maker Garan (of Garanimals fame). That's promising. It suggests a value gap between the private and public markets because Buffett finds most common stocks still overvalued. Meanwhile, private-asset funds are a contrarian's delight: net new investment in venture-capital funds, which mainly seed technology and medical start-ups, plunged to $1.9 billion last year (the least since '81) amid investment losses that roughly tracked the public markets. Yet over three years and longer, these funds have outperformed stocks. "The tourists have...