Word: eight
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fifth of the West German currency, so when it was swapped in 1990 at parity, the competitiveness of the local economy took a nosedive - compounded by a quick doubling of wages in the east following reunification later that same year. "There was a revaluation by a factor of eight. Which industry anywhere could swallow that?" Haimann asks, pointing out that some of Germany's eastern neighbors, including Poland and the Czech Republic, managed to hang on to many more jobs because they kept their currency cheap...
Joseph Odiambo walks decisively past eight plots of corn and comes to a stop in front of the ninth. Where the other plants towered sugar-cane thick with broad crisp blades, here the plants are skinny and stunted, draped with yellow-tinged leaves. The contrast is deliberate, an advertisement for the wares Odiambo sells from his roadside supply shop in western Kenya. While the shopkeeper's robust plots were planted with commercial seed and carefully nurtured with inorganic fertilizer, his sickly specimens are the result of seeds sown in the bare ground. "We wanted to have a control plot...
...reality-TV deal. But cracking today's field of giant-family reality shows could prove tougher than giving birth to octuplets. TLC, once the Learning Channel, is now so devoted to breeding, it could be called the Labor Channel. It airs Jon & Kate Plus 8 (a family with eight kids), Table for 12 (10 kids) and 18 Kids and Counting (you guessed it), about the Duggar family, which evidently plans to exhaust the J chapter in the baby-name book (Josh, Jana, John David, Jill...
...families used to be a staple of TV: Eight Is Enough, The Brady Bunch, The Waltons, The Partridge Family. When American families with three or more children were common, these clans weren't outlandish. They were like you, just more so. Lately, TV families have gotten smaller, just like viewers' families. (An exception, the HBO polygamist drama Big Love, is, tellingly, a niche show set in a niche culture...
...cold truth: that deciding how many kids to have is about not just love but also money. (One side effect of the recession: vasectomies have skyrocketed.) No-nonsense Kate Gosselin of Jon & Kate--who had twins, then sextuplets, through fertility treatments--puts it plainly: "The cost of everything times eight is ridiculous." The Gosselins have defrayed those costs through corporate freebies--bikes, toys, personal services--and, of course, the show, which, Kate told Ladies' Home Journal, is "our family job." When hubby Jon got in hot water in the tabloids recently for being seen out with female "friends...