Word: direst
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is where Merkel stomped on the brake. Greece will not get a single cent from the E.U., except in the direst of straits, and then only as loans. As Voltaire famously preached, harsh retribution serves not only to punish the culprit, but also "encourages the others" to remain virtuous. Surely, if Greece had gotten the handout, other PIIGS might have merrily continued in their extravagant ways. (Read: "Germany: Tensions...
...However, such behavior can have real consequences, since pressure from the public sometimes takes scientists out of the vacuum in which they should be working. Knowing that they will be harshly criticized if a storm is worse than expected, for example, meteorologists often hedge their bets and forecast the direst possible scenario—absolving themselves of blame at the cost of knowingly withholding their real best guesses...
...direst possible scenario also tends to be the most sensationalistic one—and, again, sometimes this is a purposeful manipulation of the data. The commercialization of weather-forecasting agencies may be leading some meteorologists to intentionally gussy up their forecasts to be more exciting—therefore driving more traffic to their website. These trends are deplorable, and we blame both the weather companies and the overeager public for taking the neutrality out of yet another science...
...America now faces the direst employment landscape since the Depression. It's troubling not simply for its sheer scale but also because the labor market, shaped by globalization and technology and financial meltdown, may be fundamentally different from anything we've seen before. And if the result is that we're stuck with persistent 9%-to-11% unemployment for a while - a range whose mathematical congruence with that other 9/11 is impossible to miss - we may be looking at a problem that will define the first term of Barack Obama's presidency the way the original 9/11 defined George...
...rose to celebrity from the direst of circumstances. Born in South Carolina, in 1927, the spawn of an African-American and Cherokee woman who had been raped by the white owner of a plantation, Eartha Mae was jettisoned by her mother at eight. Sent to an aunt in Harlem, she quit school at 15 and lived for a time in subways - an all-too-familiar blueprint for emotional disintegration...