Word: frets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...their test parameters of desiccated theories that have been around for decades, if not centuries. Molecular biologists use polymerase chain reaction on everything in sight to find the next link in some signaling pathway. Linguists chronicle yet another moribund language. Computer scientists, taking shelter from the dot-com disintegration, fret over the computational efficiency of the next trendy problem. Economists run endless regressions on the next exogenous variable they have failed to account for, and get it wrong anyway. Each field has its stamps, and all are licking and sticking in their favorite journal...
...face every day. But just as I am 1000 times more likely to die on the way to the airport than I am to die on an airplane, the chances of being directly affected by terror is also infinitesimally small, no matter how much psychic space is taken to fret about the possibility of incidents...
...recession is all but certain. Yet economically speaking, things haven't changed that much. We were in a severe slowdown and heading for recession before the attacks. Events will unfold faster now, deepening the impact. That should be your main concern. But don't fret about the economy's ability to rebound; it will, possibly even sooner and with more force than would have otherwise been the case. While waiting out the slump, here's how to survive...
...sure, many public schools--and their baleful unions and wretched bureaucrats, their rigid rules and we-know-best manner--have done a lot to hurt themselves. But as the most committed parents leave, the schools may falter more, giving the larger community yet another reason to fret over their condition. "A third of our support for schools comes from property taxes," says Ray Simon, director of the Arkansas department of education. "If a large number of a community's parents do not fully believe in the school system, it gets more difficult to pass those property taxes. And that directly...
Almost as soon as the United Nations announced that it had developed a figure for the cost of the fight against AIDS in Africa earlier this spring, Washington started to fret. The number, the Administration said, was just too big. Other donor nations were also concerned that the figure was unrealistic. The sum would be hard to raise. Moreover, a U.N. official explained, Washington was concerned that the U.S. contribution would "look like a drop in the bucket...