Word: importance
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...satisfied with merely importing Tibetan culture and commerce, Chinese are increasingly making the tourist trek to Tibet itself. The region received roughly zero non-Tibetan visitors at the start of the last century, but last year 420,000 Chinese tourists inhaled its thin air, up almost 50% from two years earlier. That means opportunity to people like Ouyang Xu, a cocky 33-year-old entrepreneur who opened the Himalaya Travel Agency last year, and took 700 Chinese to Tibet in six months. They multiply the impact of the many Chinese who have moved to Tibet in the past decade...
That doesn't mean they are going to duplicate California's calamity. But the promised benefits of deregulation have for the most part remained just that. New York City is facing an electricity shortage this summer. In the Northwest, Oregon and Washington, which typically import power from California in the winter, have recently been sending juice south and find themselves exposed to a cruel market driven up by their neighbor's woes. "Retail utilities may lack the financial resources to purchase needed supplies or build the generation we all agree is necessary," Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber wrote in a letter...
...writers decided to turn them out themselves. These admirers might get the props right--say, a mobile home with linoleum on the floor and an opened bottle of gin on the kitchen table--but not the magic that Carver could work with such material, not the sense of enormous import lurking in the pauses of desultory conversations...
...than in the U.S., capital gains are tax free, and the dollar's value against the local currency, the colon, has enjoyed a steady upward trajectory that keeps pace with the increase in the cost of living. On the other hand, sales tax is a steep 13%, and heavy import duties are levied on some assets, like cars. Complicating many financial transactions is the Costa Rican banking system: waiting for a check to clear requires extreme patience...
Sometimes innovators don't even recognize the true import of their findings. In 1660s Germany, Magdeburg Mayor Otto von Guericke tries to solve the riddle of a compass needle that doesn't always point (as people thought it should) at the Pole Star. He rubs a model of the earth made of sulfur in order to attract his experimental compass needle. The rubbing produces a noise and a spark (which Guericke mentions in a casual footnote) that turns out to have been electricity...