Word: crudely
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...almost beside the point. Character, not circumstance, is Wagner's dilemma, and a very funny and touching one it is. As might be expected from the author of such novels as Sneaky People and Neighbors, Berger surrounds Wagner with a gallery of vividly tacky secondary figures, notably a crude, egomaniacal sculptor named Siv Zirko, who is putting the make on Wagner's estranged wife. Significantly, the artist's smash-hit exhibition is just what the term implies; its centerpiece is a daunting replica of his erect phallus...
...20th century, the cleaning of Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, is in its eighth year, with five years still to go. All the wall lunettes and three of the nine Old Testament scenes on the ceiling are finished, freed of 478 years of accumulated grime, crude repaints and successive coats of darkened glue size applied as a varnish by 17th and 18th century restorers. A quite different Michelangelo, one whose intensity and beauty of color matches his long-acknowledged grandeur as draftsman and iconographer, emerges. The vault of the Sistine is now the domain of light...
...More pressing for China and the region: the impact of oil on the world's most powerful economy, the U.S. Like China, America has absorbed the rising price of crude with surprising ease so far. But $70, if that's where prices stick, is a different story. It's already clear, at least anecdotally, that the oil virus is finally beginning to have an impact on spending by U.S. consumers, who drive much of the world's demand. Wal-Mart, for example, has warned that its profits are already getting hit by high gasoline prices. And the retail giant...
...Crude oil is the single most important raw material for the chemical industry. So when oil prices rise sharply?as they have over the past few months?chemical companies usually feel the pinch hardest. But when the big German chemical firm Degussa announced its earnings last month, the news was far from gloomy. Heinz-Joachim Wagner, Degussa's chief financial officer, calculated that the firm's raw-material costs had risen by more than a third over the past 18 months. Still, sales and earnings were up in the first half of this year and Wagner says he expects...
...multiply that scenario across the thousands of European businesses dependent on crude oil, which hit a record $68 per bbl. last week and is up over 40% in the past six months. The result should be an inflationary spiral like the one that followed the oil shock of the mid-1970s, right? Not quite. For much of Europe, inflation remains muted; French consumer prices actually dropped in July. And the overall economic outlook seems to be improving in some places, most notably in Germany, Europe's biggest economy...