Word: functional
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...hotel management. Here, during East Timor's darkest days under Indonesian rule, paying guests were treated with disdain by staff dressed in combat fatigues and carrying M-16s and hand grenades. This was an Indonesian military facility that had kept its fa?ade as a hotel to mask its real function as a place to detain, interrogate, torture and sometimes kill Timorese sympathizers of the pro-independence movement...
...glass logic: if people can't afford food, raise prices. But that's what North Korea has done recently, in what could be an epochal shift away from the impoverishment of the country's Stalinist economy. The government acknowledged that market forces are, to a degree, being allowed to function in place of a system based on rationing and subsidies. Farmers' markets, for example, have been allowed to raise rice prices more than 50-fold, equaling black-market prices. To cover the increased living costs, the government is lifting wages as much as 30-fold, but free food and housing...
...While the leaks concur on the inevitability of war, they offer widely divergent scenarios for how such a war might be conducted. These function to reinforce arguments for and against the war by either minimizing or maximizing the potential cost and risk to the U.S. They can be broadly categorized as follows...
...Even more important, perhaps, is the site's propaganda function. In addition to religious tutelage on the merits of al-Qaeda's view of "jihad" and "martyrdom," the site provides news of the well-being of key al-Qaeda leaders, and occasionally even carries their audio-taped statements. Bin Laden spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith used al-Qaeda-friendly Web sites last month to prove that he remains alive and at large, and to raise the morale of its operatives. His audio-taped statement, whose authenticity was confirmed in Washington, insisted that Osama bin Laden has survived the U.S. campaign...
Preserving your smarts, they argue, depends on a positive attitude and physical and mental exertion. Activities like swimming can prod the brain to produce the chemicals it needs to function in old age. Mental aerobics like crossword puzzles may strengthen connections between nerve cells and possibly aid in forming new neurons...