Word: motorizer
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...campaign claimed a victory last year when Ford Motor Corp., another one of its target companies, withdrew from the Global Climate Coalition...
...long run, however, online voting might make little difference. Since the 1960s, the government has made numerous attempts to energize nonvoters by making it easier for them to get to the polls, extending voting hours, lowering the voting age and introducing absentee balloting and "motor voter" statutes that automatically register people when they get a driver's license. Still, voter turnout has declined steadily. Political scientists believe the underlying cause is apathy and disgust with politics, not the inconvenience of voting. Putting a ballot on the Internet might even further depress turnout by cheapening one of the hallowed rituals...
...thing, but what about having a vicarious sensory and kinesthetic experience of your favorite sport? Within the next 50 years, neural-input units will become as standard a feature of your entertainment console as the remote control. With this hairnet-like apparatus sending complex algorithmic signals into your motor cortex and parietal lobe, you'll actually feel what it's like to be slashed across the eyes by a high-sticking Tie Domi. Seated on your couch, you'll writhe in agony from lactic-acid accumulation at the end of an Ironman Triathlon. And you'll hop around your living...
Third, even in the unlikely event there is a cure for those presently paralyzed, it will at best be partial. The idea so dramatized in the Super Bowl commercial--that someone with a completely severed cord will actually walk--is very farfetched. Walking is a hugely complex motor and feedback activity. Look at how long it takes babies, who have totally intact nervous systems, to learn it. Look at how, despite decades of research to develop robots that walk, they remain primitive, often comical. Perhaps the long-injured will enjoy some partial return, some movement in the hands or chest...
CARS WITH A CHECKERED PAST The National Automobile Dealers Association is pushing for a federal law regulating the sale of rebuilt wrecked cars. Like a lot of special-interest legislation, the National Salvage Motor Vehicle Consumer Protection Act, as it's called, sounds good. No one is likely to argue with its call for federal standards to govern the sale of "nonrepairable and rebuilt vehicles." But look closely. The fine print actually provides minimal standards, gives states the option of ignoring these, applies to only half the cars on the road and keeps secret the history of near totaled vehicles...