Word: inertia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
More along these lines is heading our way. The Administration hopes to harness our inertia with its automatic pension plan, a major step toward universal savings accounts, and by dramatically simplifying applications for federal tuition aid. Its push to computerize health-care records - another big-ticket stimulus item - could make generic drugs and cost-effective procedures our default treatments. And seniors who don't select health-care or drug plans could be automatically enrolled in low-cost options. "It would be nice if we all behaved like supercomputers, but that's not how we are," Orszag says...
...neoclassical economics wants government to let us alone to do what we want, behavioral economics leaves room for government action to help us do what we would really want if we were rational agents. Unfortunately, the qualities that have crippled Washington in recent years - inertia, denial, allergy to complexity, preference for short-term gratification over long-term planning - are our own flaws writ large. Members of Congress are people too; they're likely to embrace change only when it's easy, popular and rewarding. Do we really want them trying to change...
...Tangiers, his travels across Africa and the Middle East, and his arrival at the Kaaba. The rumor of promise in telling a story like this is quickly squashed by the fact that much of this trip consisted of traveling through hundreds of miles of featureless desert. Thankfully, the sheer inertia of this truth keeps “Journey to Mecca” from exceeding 45 minutes, but it doesn’t stop those particular 45 minutes from being utterly sterile. It’s also worth mentioning that every minute is on an IMAX screen...
...answer to the challenge of tackling the inertia that still afflicts India is not obvious. Those who attacked Mumbai did so not with clear demands or ideology, but with simply a desire to tilt India's troubled state toward violence and conflict. Tightened security and better intelligence are important, but they cannot replace political solutions in Kashmir and Gujarat. Shows of unity and strength won't erase the pervasive culture of corruption in public service. There are no guarantees of the real change Mumbai is clamoring for, but, says Guha, "it's more likely now than at any time...
...always believed in multilateralism,” said Lewis, who is also a former United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and deputy director of UNICEF. “But some dreadful things have been done through the negligence and inertia of the multilateral system.” He cited the World Health Organization’s 3 by 5 Initiative, which many countries criticized, as an example of an intervention that brought out the “damnably rivalrous” nature of international assemblies. Lewis also spoke of the recent study by Harvard researchers that found that...