Word: functionally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Throughout history, the best minds have struggled to define what music is for. To Pythagoras, it was the sound of mathematical, cosmic harmony reverberating in the human soul; to Darwin, a function of sexual selection; to psychologist Steven Pinker, it is a kind of "auditory cheesecake ... crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties." Like life itself, music is universally experienced yet ultimately eludes explanation...
...meantime, the council can’t function without its money, and the process soon to be formalized will guarantee that funds can never be withheld again on any issue so the agreement has produced a long term resolution to avoid that crisis ever again...
...Couture, it is true, is an art form—a channel for the transmission of culture. As is the case with aesthetics in general, its refined function is expression, a means by which an individual projects inner feeling and character. As such, fashion is a sensibility with which it is important to stay in tune. However, it seems that increasingly fewer individuals outside of the elite circles dictate or are even truly conscious of their tastes. In the practical, profit-driven implementation of retail and commercialization, fashion is becoming an increasingly supply-side phenomenon that creates its own inevitable...
...launched an investigation of his agency's own IG office, headed by John Helgerson. The move is unprecedented and provoked criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for jeopardizing the independence of the IG - by intimidating any staff that might want to report misgivings - and interfering with its oversight function. In a letter urging Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, to order Hayden to cease his inquiry, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Select Intelligence Committee, said that the CIA's IG was "possibly the most important" of all the IGs because the secretive nature...
...learning that not all IGs are equal. The IG at his previous post as National Security Agency director was among a second tier of IGs, created a decade after the original IG Act of 1978. Appointed by the agency head, they have less independence and investigatory powers and function more like internal auditors than the original batch of IGs that are attached to major government departments such as the CIA. Eleanor Hill, a former Defense Department IG from 1995 to 1999, suggested that the NSA's domestic wiretapping scandal might have been avoided if there had been greater oversight...