Word: ironizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...boost Brazil from the Third to the First World, and he is convinced he can do it with a freer market, greater industrial efficiency and a leaner bureaucracy. Certainly, Brazil's potential is enormous. It has immense rivers and forests, rich agricultural lands, huge deposits of gold, gems, petroleum, iron ore and minerals. With a gross domestic product of $350 billion and annual exports of $34 billion, it is Latin America's most developed nation...
...folks on the other end of the Iron Curtain must have had a field day with my correspondence too. "Look, we've got another idealistic American youth," the Bulgarian minister of information probably gloated. "We can count on him when the revolution comes around. In the meantime, give him the Tassle Treatment!" Then he cackles like Bulgarian assasins do in bad spy movies...
When health clubs became a rage in the 1980s, everybody loved to sweat. Squadrons of would-be Schwarzeneggers and Fondas pumped iron, tightened tummies, aerobicized -- and often found attractive new friends. But after years of pulling in clients almost effortlessly, clubs are facing new challenges. For one, the proliferation of health spas, which have doubled in number, to 20,000, since 1980, has created fierce competition. And as members grow older, they are becoming pickier, more prone to injury and, often, just plain bored...
Louis Slesin's stories have a tendency to shock. Like the one about the 23 workers at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Me., who got "sunburns" one rainy day when someone on a Navy frigate flicked on the ship's radar. Or the trash fires that start spontaneously from time to time near the radio and TV broadcast antennas in downtown Honolulu. Or the pristine suburb of Vernon, N.J., that has both one of the world's highest concentrations of satellite transmitting stations and a persistent -- and unexplained -- cluster of Down's syndrome cases...
...surprise to learn how hard he worked, albeit sporadically, to support his family. He was a brakeman for the Southern Pacific, a job that required a quick mind and quicker feet. Later, fellow workers at the Los Gatos Tire Co. marveled at his speed and skill with iron and sledge...