Word: fulcrums
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ability to balance on the simplicity-complexity fulcrum is producing results elsewhere too--in increasingly complex software that yields increasingly intuitive user interfaces (think the iPhone); in algorithms that show how the movements of schooling fish mirror the behavior of investors, making stock-market predictions more reliable. Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize--winning physicist and a co-founder of SFI, likes to cite the case of physicist Karl Jansky, who founded the science of radio astronomy in 1931 when he was studying the hiss of electromagnetic static that bathes the Earth--part of the same hiss you hear...
...control advocates, the hearing's most ominous sign was Dellinger's reception from Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court's fulcrum, who clearly pivoted toward a more expansive reading of the amendment. Like Scalia, he decoupled its two clauses, arguing that the state's right to maintain a militia did not imply that individuals did not also have a right to defend themselves in their homes. "The amendment says we reaffirm the right to have a militia," Kennedy said, "but in addition, there is a right to bear arms." Kennedy's crucial swing vote would tip the scales in favor...
...Pakistan but in neighboring countries - to balance Soviet influence in India or to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the U.S. has rarely kept its eye on the ball. In the 1980s, Washington aided the regime of General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, using Pakistan as a fulcrum to help pry the Soviet army out of Afghanistan. The policy succeeded - but when victory was assured, the U.S. lost interest, while thousands of young Muslim extremists who had been armed to combat the communists turned their weapons against Pakistan and the U.S. With perverse timing, Washington deserted the elected...
...decline—as in any time of imperial decline—Ferguson said, “the question is: Who is in charge now?” While violence in the first half of the 20th century was concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe, Ferguson said the next fulcrum of violence will probably be the Middle East. All the ingredients for “megadeath” are there, he said. But Ferguson said that “the importance of human agency” in starting wars should not be dismissed. In the question and answer session that...
...chosen an interesting time to engage. Russia is at a fulcrum. Fueled by high prices for energy and raw materials, the economy is booming as it has not been in decades. Most Russian citizens live infinitely freer lives now than they did during the Soviet era of gulags and totalitarianism. But Russia's political system is dominated by a military-industrial-security complex, many of whose members (like Putin) have roots in the old KGB and seem determined to maintain control of the nation's natural resources for their own benefit. Kasparov doesn't believe Russia's leaders are readying...