Word: functional
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...graduated set of emissions goals that stretch further into the future and cumulatively address the problem. That would allow time for new technology to deliver efficiency gains, for developing countries to incorporate cleaner growth into their plans and for political leaders to see that if markets are allowed to function, people and businesses will respond to incentives in ways the politicians can't quite imagine today...
...observers didn't really have the supernovas' brightness right; perhaps the light from faraway stellar explosions was dimmed by some sort of dust. The unique properties of a cosmological constant, moreover, would make the universe slow down early on, then accelerate. That's because dark energy grows as a function of space. There wasn't much space in the young, small universe, so back then the braking force of gravity would have reigned supreme. More recently, the force of gravity fell off as the distance between galaxies grew and that same increase made for more dark energy. Nobody had probed...
...Laden's role has always been that of facilitator. That was his function in the 'Islamist International' formed, with the active encouragement of the CIA and Egyptian and Saudi intelligence, to recruit volunteers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. His considerable wealth (and ability to raise funds from others) and his organizational expertise played a key role in helping the "Arab Afghans," as the volunteers became known, play a creditable role in the war against the Soviets. And once that war was won, he continued to play the same role, keeping its veterans together and maintaining an infrastructure...
...strings when they act. What Bin Laden may in fact personify is the coming together of diverse Islamist groups during the Afghan war, and their identification of the U.S. as their primary enemy during the decade that followed. So lop off the head, and the body continues to function, because it remains a diverse and diffuse set of groups and cells with their own internal structures, driven by a common sense of implacable grievance. That menace will remain, even if Bin Laden is removed. We may simply have to find a new name and face...
...Oxygen deprivation does strange things to the human body. Heart rates go haywire, brain function decreases, blood thickens, intestines shut down. Bad ideas inexplicably pop into your head, especially above 25,000 ft., where, as Krakauer famously wrote in Into Thin Air, climbers have the "mind of a reptile...