Word: ox
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...city epitomizes the perfect storm engulfing Asia's roads, it is surely India's capital, New Delhi. Swarming the city's potholed streets are 4 million cars and trucks, 600,000 motorized two- and three-wheeled vehicles and innumerable bicycles and nonmotorized forms of transport ranging from trishaws to ox carts. There are also animals, everything from sacred cows to dogs, cats, monkeys?as well as countless pedestrians. The latter do not fare well in this free-for-all. New Delhi's newspapers recently labeled the city a "pedestrian graveyard." According to the capital's transport department, nearly half...
...England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition in the fall of 1906, a British scientist named Francis Galton became interested in a weight-judging competition: 800 fairgoers (a diverse group that included butchers, farmers, clerks, housewives, townspeople, smart people, dumb people, average people) tried to guess what a particular ox would weigh after having been slaughtered and dressed. The correct answer was exactly 1,198 lbs. After the judges awarded their prize, Galton borrowed all the entry tickets, did some arithmetic to get the mean of the fairgoers' guesses and found that their collective estimate...
...random gathering of people turned out to be an unexpected collective genius at ox-weight appraisal. Starting with this anecdote, James Surowiecki, financial columnist for the New Yorker, builds a fascinating case, summed up in his title and subtitle: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (Doubleday; 296 pages...
...went by air, which meant landing at one of the most eerie monuments to Burma's economic mismanagement: Mandalay International Airport. Topped with baroque spires to recall the palatial splendors of Burma's royal past, the airport was completed in 2000 at an estimated cost of $150 million. Today, ox carts ply its grand, four-lane approach road while the building slumbers in near darkness. The departure and arrival boards are empty, possibly nonfunctioning. Passengers check in for a handful of daily flights, then clump down a dormant escalator to a stifling departure lounge, where they fan themselves with their...
...sameness to the drinks, in both their sweet taste and their ingredients (caffeine, fructose and taurine, a nonessential amino acid, are among the most common). They also share a penchant for aggressive, alpha-male names like Rockstar (which tastes like fizzy bubble gum), Venom (with a citrus bite), Blue Ox, Monster, Hype, "bone-crushing citrus" Piranha, Stinger and Whoop...