Word: paradoxers
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Whiffs of inflation are in the air, and a dead-tired stock market is sending the message that economic troubles lurk. It hardly seems possible that prosperous times will soon fade. Profits are up, and record numbers of Americans are at work. Yet the paradox of a market economy is that stock investors get scorched near the end of a robust expansion, while good times still roar. The reverse is true at the trough of a recession, when times are toughest...
...question is called the Needham paradox, after Joseph Needham, the great British scholar who raised it in his multivolume history of Chinese technology. Needham's answer sheds light on China's ultimate condition, allowing us to sort through the buzz of short-term problems that distract attention from the fundamental change now taking place. Yes, the West mastered the technology that China first discovered. Yet much more important, according to Needham, was that China lost its edge in the 15th century by suppressing entrepreneurs whose power posed a threat to the Emperor. The empire was made safe from within...
Smith wanted to write what she terms "a big book," and she has. She exposes the hilarity of the rules we live by--whether they are determined by religion or geography or biology. Immigrants, in particular, face a paradox, for they have broken with the codes of their homeland in search of a better alternative, but the new rules leave them longing for the old rules. White Teeth doesn't harangue or choose sides; it sketches characters that hover on the human edge of caricature. The novel is so sprawling, so audacious, that at times it feels as if Smith...
...answer lies in a paradox. No one argues that life on Earth would be possible without ecosystems, but the entire march of human progress has occurred against a backdrop of landscapes transformed from their natural state to suit the needs of agriculture and industry. Various societies have degraded huge areas without suffering dire consequences. In the U.S., pioneers plowed up almost the entire prairie on the nation's way to becoming an agricultural and economic colossus, but America lost what may have been the greatest concentration of animal life on the planet. Britain, Japan, Korea and Thailand are among...
There's the paradox. Because if one sentiment links the antiglobalists, besides their concern for the world's have-nots, it's a distrust of the large, of the enormous (except for Big Labor--for now). Their spirit recalls a conflict from the '70s that also pitted young idealists against a fearsome acronym. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, moved by a belief that small is beautiful and big is hideous, set out to build a personal computer that would challenge IBM's great mainframes, their aim was not merely technical but also social. They wanted to bring power...