Word: genericism
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...governments respond to the emergency by instituting border controls and disrupting world trade. Not only would the global recession worsen - a 2008 World Bank report estimated that a severe pandemic could reduce the world's GDP by 4.8% - but we depend on international trade now for countless necessities, from generic medicines to surgical gloves. The just-in-time production systems embraced by companies like Wal-Mart - where inventories are kept as low as possible to cut waste and boost profit - mean that we don't have stockpiles of most things. Supply chains for food, medicines and even the coal that...
...Biokleen—in the immediate vicinity of the Square. In a laundry emergency, the only option is to run to CVS and grab the nearest brand, which tends not to be a bottle of earth-friendly vegetable derivatives. Moreover, eco-friendly detergents tend to be more expensive than generic detergents like Tide. At the least, a stigma exists amongst the student body surrounding such “organic” products, which are perceived...
Rosetta Stone does have its critics. The company essentially uses generic images, mostly from the Washington, D.C. area, to explain vocabulary across all its language programs. This technique downplays the cultural idiosyncrasies of each specific language. "They just throw it out there at the student," says Mark Kaiser, associate director of the Berkeley Language Center. "They fail to present language as a representation of that language's culture." Author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss, a regular language acquisition blogger who has become fluent in Spanish, German, Chinese and Japanese, is quick to credit Rosetta Stone for engaging more people in language...
...Polls have yielded some hints of hope for Republicans. Several recent surveys show the GOP neck in neck with Democratic candidates, or trailing only slightly, in generic congressional matchups - a vast improvement from last year, when they lagged by double digits - and even winning Independents. "Last year we lost races we should have won, including Speaker Hastert's seat and the Mississippi special election," says Doug Heye, a GOP strategist. "Now Republicans are competitive in more races and are now tied in the generic ballot despite President Obama's popularity...
...that reason I generally write about Philadelphia. My experience is that people extrapolate it. If you write specifically enough, they extrapolate it to their hometown, wherever that is, even if it's Amsterdam. By the same token, if you don't write specifically enough and you have generic Anywhere U.S.A., then nobody feels anything. The whole bottom drops out of the story...