Word: direness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...forestall the graying of the developed world; no method to recycle wealth from North to South. Global population pressures represent the strongest aspect of Kennedy's bleak portrait of life in the next century. Small wonder that he begins with a tip of the hat to Thomas Malthus' dire -- but ultimately incorrect -- late 18th century prediction of worldwide starvation. "The world's population was less than a billion when Malthus first wrote his Essay ((on Population))," Kennedy notes. "Now it is heading, at the least, toward 7 or 8 billion, perhaps to well over 10 billion." But elsewhere Kennedy...
...compensation, which could include stock options. But at the same time, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets the standards for America's accountants, was considering a rule that would force companies to deduct the value of stock options from their earnings. That too would have an immediate and dire effect: it would reduce profits up to 48% for the average small firm and 3% for the typical big corporation. It would also drastically curtail the use of stock options by companies...
...President makes a sound case that America's budgetary red ink in the long run will drown all hope of economic progress. To about 230 businessmen invited last Wednesday to the White House, Clinton gave some dire predictions about the U.S. "Ten years from now, if we don't change present policies": budget deficits exceeding $650 billion a year, or more than double even today's bloated figures; and a national debt equal to 78% of the country's total output of goods and services. But to many people that might seem a rather dry statistical apocalypse and not exactly...
Similarly, the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer is often trotted out as an example of how the international community successfully came to grips with a dire threat. Unfortunately, the protocol is not a success for the ozone layer, which will continue to deteriorate as CFCs manufactured during years of international temporizing wander upward to the stratosphere like leisurely assassins. Bush ridiculed this threat during the '92 campaign, calling Gore "Ozone Man," but in fact the loss of the world's upper atmospheric shield is one environmental threat that has people genuinely scared...
Jesse, Edward, Dale and Jerry agree that big hair is a dire faux pas. It is, in fact, a fashion kiss of death, especially here in this urban mecca where we all want...