Word: minor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Travelers who drive far enough into the parched interior of Australia, taking care to lug extra fuel, water and minor spare parts, enter a region of outback so distant and featureless that it lies beyond the reassuring certitude of maps. So says Australian novelist Janette Turner Hospital at the outset of her grim, millennial novel Oyster (Norton; 400 pages; $25.95). Such travelers--an Australian father, say, and an American stepmother, joining forces to track down backpacking adult children who had disappeared months before--would soon become disoriented. Even in their car they would be dazed by heat and a pervading...
...other states have enacted similar legislation (see map). CAP laws are pending in Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Missouri and South Carolina. In Connecticut, California and Florida, violation is a felony. In Florida adults can face five years in prison and a $5,000 fine if a minor obtains a firearm and uses it to inflict injury or death...
...saying goes, it's always time to buy until it isn't. "If Asia stays minor -- which personally, I doubt -- and interest rates stay down, there's no reason this shouldn't continue," Kadlec says. "We could have 10,000 by May -- this thing is out of control...
That is not a minor hit. It would mean gross domestic product's increasing considerably less than the robust 3% or so that it might otherwise have managed, unemployment's rising a bit rather than sinking to still further lows, and a distinct slowdown in corporate profits--especially among companies that had been exporting $300 billion or more a year to the Asian region. On the other hand, sagging demand from Asia is contributing to a worldwide deflation (a term rarely heard since the 1930s) in commodity prices, especially oil. And that is helping to douse what little inflationary fire...
...frankly, after the obligatory minor spasms of unreasoning, abject fear had rippled from hair follicles to bowel, it seemed to me that maybe the end of civilization as we know it isn't such a bad idea. After all, in our long, tedious march of regress have we earthlings really accomplished much besides spewing garbage, ammunition and the Jerry Springer Show into the environment? Wouldn't it set a nice example if we could just for once accept the inevitable and issue a press release reading, "Hey, we gave it our best shot, but we really weren...