Word: discomforting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That discomfort is exactly what the agencies count on. The idea of using costumed collectors dates back to the 1980s, when a company, the Cobrador del Frac (or Tuxedo Collector), began sending out agents dressed in black ties and driving cars emblazoned with the company logo. Others followed suit, in ever more extravagant getups, all of them banking on the debtor's sense of shame to motivate repayment. "Personal honor, your public image, is still very important in Spain," says José Romero of the Zorro Collectors. "If one of our agents shows up at an apartment, everyone...
While Obama's economists search for pain-free, hassle-free solutions to our easy-way-out instincts, his rhetoric often aims to build our tolerance for pain and hassle. He urges us to snap out of denial, to accept that we're in for some prolonged discomfort but not to wallow in it, to focus on our values. That happens to sound a lot like "acceptance and commitment therapy," the latest advance in behavioral psychology. Instead of assisting smokers to ignore cravings and chronic-pain sufferers to think about other things - the old denial approach - acceptance therapy pushes patients...
...Borat and now as a gay Austrian fashion guru, Baron Cohen has fashioned a comedy career from a series of deadpan assaults on the propriety of unsuspecting citizens. He basically makes fun of naive people and exploits the weakness of their decency for our amusement and discomfort. What, then, could be more delicious for Baron Cohen than spying on the members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings board - the de facto censorship committee of Hollywood movies - as they recoiled from the backdoor action onscreen and then had to consider saying no to one of the most eagerly...
...researchers found, for example, that 34% of former egg donors didn't recall being aware at the time of donation of the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, the most common side effect. The majority of donors experience at least the mild or moderate form of this syndrome, which involves discomfort, bloating or nausea and usually resolves itself on its own. The severe version of this syndrome is rare - only 100 to 200 for every 100,000 women - but its consequences can include kidney failure and death. And then there are other side effects, such as bleeding, infection and death, which...
...With the educational gap between boys and girls closing, it is precisely the wrong time to revert back to single-sex education. Girls are finally becoming more comfortable in a mixed-gender classroom, and it is high time to fully break the vicious cycle of discomfort in a coeducational environment...