Word: ironical
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...close the precapitalist world was to the Middle Ages in most material conditions of life. Some statistics: world production of pig iron soared from 10 million tons in 1867 to 357 million tons a century later. As late as 1850, human muscle and animal power accounted for 94% of the energy used in U.S. industry; today they supply less than 1%. Populations burgeoned as capitalism produced the food and goods to keep unprecedented numbers of people alive. North America's population exploded from 5.7 million in 1800 to 81 million by 1900 and 339 million...
...thinkers who followed Adam Smith had made capitalism seem heartless indeed. The Rev. Thomas Malthus grimly announced that no person has any claim on society for a "right to subsistence when his labor will not fairly purchase it." David Ricardo worked out what became known as the "iron law of wages." His thesis: workers in the long run would get only the bare minimum necessary to keep themselves and their families alive. If they temporarily should earn more, they would breed so many children that competition for jobs eventually would drive wages down again. Ricardo did not think that this...
...military efficiency in the lunchline, and when they get over their initial, unthinking repugnance, who knows? After all, the University of Georgia hasn't had any trouble to speak of. But Hall and company have their work cut out for them. There is something sinister about the little iron boxes with their guts of printed circuitry they conjure up visions of guard towers and concentration cartps, armed guards frisking students in the corridors. All you have to do is put your fingers in the slots and you smell the jail house...
...broad, flag-festooned boulevards are dozens of statues erected in colonial days to honor such Portuguese explorers of old as Lourenço Marques and Vasco da Gama, who brought the first Portuguese presence to Mozambique in 1498. Only the pedestals remain in place, while the stately stone and iron images of Marques, Da Gama and others stand in disarray in a junkyard...
Contrary Approach. To be recycled, buildings must conform to an economic law as iron-cast as their own beams or facades: they must pay their way. The entrepreneur begins with a solid old structure that is well served by transportation facilities or on the fringes of desirable downtown areas. When architects come in to assess conversion problems, they have to take an approach contrary to all of their training; instead of form following function, function has to follow form. "We simply deal with what we find," says Boston Architect Paul McGinley of Anderson Notter Associates Inc. "The old building itself...