Word: importance
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Proponents laud Kramer's system for infusing humdrum regular-season matchups with drama and import. But critics say the BCS can discriminate against worthy underdogs and elevate the wrong teams to its ultimate showdown. Outrage over its capricious rankings spurred Senate hearings in 2003 and a congressional inquiry in 2005. A 2007 Gallup poll found that only 15% of fans would balk at scrapping the present format for a tidy year-end tournament. This year, that number is probably even lower in the Lone Star State...
...photography emerged in the mid-19th century, photographing naked women became one of the first orders of business. The French ruled the early days of pornography publishing, distributing programs for Parisian cabarets adorned with topless dancers as early as the 1870s. While some Americans attempted to import racy material from Europe, the industry was blunted in the U.S. by the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal statute that restricted the transport of obscene literature through the mail. (Anthony Comstock, the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, was perhaps the anti-Hefner, a Puritanical zealot...
...import of the deal, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), is inarguable: after nearly six years, it would mark the beginning of the end of the U.S. occupation. Under SOFA's terms, the U.S. would withdraw nearly all 150,000 of its troops by New Year's Day 2012, leaving Iraq's security in the hands of its own army...
...Home"] Other factors have forced the nation to look anew at its role in the world. A crucial consideration is the nation's dwindling birth rate. Japan is running out of workers. To fill its factories and care for a graying population, the Asian nation will need to import ever greater numbers of laborers from abroad. What better way to lure skilled immigrants to Japan - ones who might be just as interested in moving to the U.S. or Australia - than piquing their interest in all things Japanese...
...other cases, overly specific language leads to unrealistic standards, as in the shrimp import dispute where the law required the use of a particular rescue device for the trapped turtles...