Word: importances
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Sony released the Playstation 3 in Japan on November 11. That was last Saturday. By Thursday Japanese import units had already made their way halfway around the world to New York City's Chinatown, where they were available for a 100% markup - and they were selling. That's how high the demand is for Sony's new video game machine: people would actually pay double the price to get it one day early...
...Playstation 3 goes on sale in the U.S. today, but I wouldn't recommend buying one, not even for the regular price, which is plenty expensive without the import markup. Sure, the Playstation 2 was the bestselling machine from the previous generation, and sure, the Playstation3 is powered by a stupendously powerful chip, the "Cell processor." (I'm sorry, but naming a computer chip is like naming your genitals: you're compensating for something.) Patience, young padawan. The time has not yet come...
...ways in which people try to challenge, and change, the status quo. Enrique Chagoya’s simple modification of Goya’s 1799 etchings against the censorship and suppression of Enlightenment ideas, “Los Caprichos,” fashion them to fit issues of import 200 years later. A tiny Tinky Winky Teletubby doll stands witness to continued relevance of protest art like Goya’s. Though the inclusion of such disparate works may initially seem to belie the show’s profession of a unified theme, viewers should eventually find a method...
...many of Mexico's largest companies, some now in the vanguard of going global. They benefited from their proximity to the U.S. and from imitating its business culture. (The Dallas Cowboys count about 1,400 Monterrey fans as season-ticket holders.) They also bulked up on Mexico's earlier import-substitution policies, which positioned them well for the challenges and opportunities when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force in January 1994. The lion's share of $200 billion of foreign investment that has rolled in since then--two-thirds from the U.S.--went to the north...
...overlap in Mexico's and China's exports. As a consequence, the maquila operations along the border have bled 800,000 jobs in recent years. Infrastructure investment has dropped off so much in Mexico that for relatively light goods, it is just as cheap for the U.S. to import from China as from southern Mexico. And although a Mexican wage earner is paid three times as much as his Chinese counterpart, high domestic prices undercut, and nearly level out, his purchasing power. (Conversely, high domestic prices also push up those wages, further undermining Mexican firms' competitiveness.) "For Latin America, China...