Word: means
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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SINCE the start of this decade, Americans and America watchers have been obsessed with the idea that the United States is in decline. Soaring deficits and rising imports mean the eagle is falling, wrote so many doomsayers, who churned out tome after tome documenting their claims. America was losing--or had already lost--its competitive edge to the Japanese, and the only way for the U.S. to climb back to the top was to model itself after Japan...
Eddy's tree-ring data revealed other 50-to-100-year intervals in the past when carbon-14 production was high and the sun apparently quiescent. But did this mean that all of these periods were times of extreme cold? Many scientists doubted it, suggesting that the correlation between the Maunder minimum and the little ice age might be nothing more than sheer coincidence. Changes in solar cyclic activity, the doubters argued, were not necessarily accompanied by variations in the sun's output of heat and light and probably did not affect terrestrial weather and climate...
...conscientious shoppers, finding the right product at the supermarket used to mean checking the prices, scrutinizing the salt content and looking out for saturated fats. But nowadays that's not all. Many consumers have added a new standard to their shopping lists: corporate responsibility. They may favor Campbell's Prego spaghetti sauce over Unilever's Ragu because Campbell runs a day-care center and Unilever invests in South Africa. Consumers are eating chicken instead of tuna salad because thousands of dolphins drown each year in tuna nets. They have put pressure on Uniroyal to halt distribution of the suspected carcinogen...
...largest possible car, the kind you can land aircraft on top of with no problem, and they drive them incredibly slowly. At the same time, there are people who cannot imagine going less than 70 m.p.h., including in their driveways. Then the politics here is amazing. I mean, we have rallies here for the right to sacrifice chickens...
...Frankly, I just think they want to get the decision and get out of town," Terry said. "I mean, if I was a Supreme Court justice, I would throw the decision off the airplane as I was leaving the country...