Word: elements
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...background: there are 12 Chinese zodiac animals, each of which is subdivided by five elements signaling different qualities - wood, earth, water, fire and metal. This year's ox is an earth ox. That may sound innocuous enough, but according to one astrological interpretation, financial markets are in dire need of a spark from the fire element to set stocks blazing. For other fortune tellers, the worry is absence of metal, an element with which they make a simple astrological connection to money. A metal year, they say, brings plenty of gold. An earth year buries all that lucre under piles...
What's most inspiring about this development is that it can't be faked. There is no element of affirmative action here. Sidney Poitier won't do. The point is not to be black but to sound black. And unlike the integration and near domination of African Americans in professional sports, this is not even a matter of genuine talent breaking down the floodgates. Plenty of white or white-sounding actors could say "THIS [pause] is CNN" as well as Jones. Most people who have heard that phrase a hundred times don't know whose voice it is and - unless...
...first element will be giving money to state and local governments to offset their shortfalls and prevent them from raising taxes, slashing services and downsizing public employees. Just about every economist wants this aid approved yesterday because just as public dollars can have a big multiplier effect, public cuts that are imminent in New York, California and Florida can have a negative multiplier effect. "You can't let the safety net unravel just when people need it most," says Len Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "A lot of states have been terribly irresponsible, but this probably...
...bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines, which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again." So far, bottle-burying isn't an element of the Obama stimulus plan. But just wait till next week...
...rates are much lower when drugs like Ritalin and Adderall are prescribed for ADHD. It's not clear whether the pattern of addiction under medical supervision for enhancement would follow the former or the latter - or whether it would even meet the bar for addiction. Medically speaking, without the element of harm, regular drug use - or even dependence - alone doesn't qualify as addiction...