Word: costly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...devices, which must be fitted by doctors or midwives and cost around $25 each, are equally effective in preventing pregnancy (failure rate: about 15%). Enthusiasts claim the cap has several advantages. For one thing, it is more durable: a diaphragm can tear and needs to be checked for holes regularly. But the chief benefit of the cap is that it allows greater sexual spontaneity and gratification. Women can wear it for up to 48 hours, compared with 24 hours for the diaphragm. And because the cap fits tightly and rarely leaks, the reintroduction of spermicide before intercourse is unnecessary. Declares...
Environmentalists and engineers know that hydrogen would make a better jet fuel than the standard aviation kerosene. In its liquid form, hydrogen packs more energy per pound than any other non-nuclear fuel and, burning, produces a plume of H2O. But there are major drawbacks, including cost. Extracting hydrogen from water or natural gas and cooling it to -423 degrees F make the fuel many times more expensive than kerosene, which goes for about...
...failure. Alcohol is legal because Americans like to drink. Almost all drinkers indulge their habit in moderation, with no harmful effect. Quite the reverse: alcohol is a small but genuine contribution toward their pursuit of happiness. Society has decided that the pleasure of drinking is worth the equally genuine cost to society and pain to many individuals of alcoholism, automobile accidents and so on. What's more, this social decision is correct. The world would not be a better place without booze, even if that were possible. The pursuit of happiness has its legitimate claims in the social calculus...
...mainstream argument for legalization is pragmatic: the war against drugs has failed, and the cost to society of keeping them illegal is greater than the cost of learning to live with them. Out at the fringes of respectability is the libertarian argument: people have the right to control their own lives, even to wreck their own lives, if that is their choice. Unmentioned as a reason for legalizing drugs, though widely believed and acted on as a practical matter by most Americans, is what might be called the Dionysian argument. Look, it says, the desire for an occasional artificial escape...
...radio data from soil samples back from Mars. This time, the samples would be returned to earth aboard the Soviet craft after a period of quarantine, possibly aboard an earth-orbiting space station. Says a NASA official: "It's a scheme that has a lot of attractive aspects." Estimated cost to the U.S.: a cool $2.5 billion and six years of prelaunch labor. The round-trip mission itself would take two years...