Word: excessives
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CAMBRIDGE water has never been known for its purity. For years, observers have decried the rusty pipes, old equipment and adminstrative lethargy that make the city's water the most unsafe in the Boston area. Yet the January news that Cambridge water has contained concentrations of THM in excess of the level permitted by Environmental Protection Agency regulations for the past 16 months still shocked Harvard health officials. One would have hoped that administrators who are supposed to protect the community from health risks would have known about the situation earlier...
Which gets to perhaps the central fact about today's excess of gossip and celebrity journalism: it is contemptuous of readers and viewers. It says they are incapable of dealing with real news and that they must be fed Pablum and given the illusion that they are vicariously participating in important stuff. It is also about class: a nouveau celebrity class applauded less for achievement than for the mere acquisition of money or the act of becoming famous. I suspect that the pre-eminence of this type of gossip and celebrity journalism is not unrelated to the private frustrations...
...other words, students have been denied crucial health information by both Cambridge and Harvard. Although Cambridge officials claim the current excess of cancer-causing trihalomethanes (THMs) has ended, Harvard has a responsibility to verify this claim independently. More broadly, Harvard administrators must develop a mechanism to notify students of future environmental problems. Harvard must monitor the quality of the water it uses, especially when hazardous chemicals literally threaten the health of its academic community...
...raiders and often seemed consumed by vanity, ego and greed. Drexel vanished almost overnight last week when its parent company, a victim of the very junk-bond market that Drexel had created, filed for bankruptcy. The firm's legacy is a debt-laden corporate America and a backlash against excess...
Pension-fund holders should beware if their employer has terminated its retirement plan -- usually to tap excess cash -- and replaced it with an annuity, a kind of insurance policy that pays income to the company's retirees on a regular basis. Revlon got its hands on $100 million in 1986, when it closed out its pension fund and bought an $85 million annuity -- from First Executive. A safety net protects employees in most states, which have agencies that insure private pension funds against default. The Federal Government guarantees many pensions as well. But it is uncertain how much protection this...