Word: crude
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...they roam the Internet, enabling candidates to tailor their message more effectively. When McCain needed assistance in getting on the ballot in Virginia, the firm helped craft a banner ad on various websites that invited users to print out a copy of the petition they had to sign. Crude for now, the technology nevertheless offers more precision than TV ads, and in the future may be able to help candidates pitch their Social Security message to seniors or their health-care cures to soccer moms...
While this appears to be a policy of tolerance, it is nothing but a crude attempt to exploit religion and transmute churches into another arm of the state propaganda apparatus. These state churches reek of the government's attempts to mold them into tools to maintain support for their regime. Their names and ideologies drip with the official mix of nationalism and support for the Communist party's authority. The official Catholic church is the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association; the principal theological seminary's mission is to train clergy who are patriotic and support the Communist Party. It is absurd...
While the state's Procrustean protection mangles official religion into crude propaganda, the churches not endorsed by the government face persecution by a wide array of bureaucratic and security agencies. Their members are often harassed and bullied if they choose not to join the official churches, and even run the risk of losing jobs and having their children barred from school. The administrators of the underground churches, and especially the Catholic Church which remains loyal to the Vatican, are often jailed or sent to labor camps; a considerable number of Catholic bishops are currently detained, while another died last year...
...moment too soon. Petroleum-based plastics, the magically versatile material of the 20th century, have two major problems: Their manufacturing cost is held hostage by crude oil prices, and, because they're not easy to break down chemically, they can linger in landfills for decades. PLA solves both problems, and is as durable as petroleum-based plastics. The complex process that creates the new plastic involves feeding the crops to microbes, similar to the way yogurt is curdled. The result has been compared to the polyester frequently used in plastic soda bottles, carpeting and wrinkle-free clothes, and clothing manufacturers...
...doubly crushing because Venezuela is suffering one of its worst recessions ever. Decades of foul politics played just as large a role in this catastrophe as the week of foul weather. Venezuela has the hemisphere's largest oil reserves and is America's No. 1 foreign source of crude. But because a corrupt elite, los cogollos (slang for big shots), has pillaged the country's oil wealth for generations, 80% of Venezuela's people live in poverty--and each year, searching for jobs, they scratch their way onto Caracas' perilous mountainside real estate. In those vertical, collapsible slums, potable water...