Word: paradoxical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...best of times for airline companies--rising stock prices and record profits--the opposite is true for passengers. In most service industries, the customer comes first. But because of the nature of airlines--huge, expensive jets whose fixed costs can't be adjusted for demand--a peculiar paradox emerges. "The policies and procedures at the major airlines are geared to produce a system that meets the needs of the airline and not the customer," says Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant in Golden, Colorado...
With our school days and our assimilation nearing completion, we've changed our minds about Thoreau more than once, and it's even questionable as to whether a nonconformist is wearing sheep's clothing. Rather than dwelling on that grown-up paradox, think of childhood, when the behavioral variations weren't quite so polar. That such a diversity of functioning in childhood exists may help to explain childhood cruelty--a cruelty that attempts to set standardized conventions, leaving no room for dissent...
...positive men who talk about having put their feelings on hold from the day they first tested positive. Some even hid behind the virus as a lethal scare tactic, a way to fend off attachments with friends and family that they weren't sure they could handle. (One more paradox of the epidemic: even the Jolly Roger can be a flag of convenience.) Now they realize they may have to go back into the world and forge the kind of attachments that get you through a lifetime...
...says graduating before his 21st birthday presents an amusing paradox...
...again. (There are now hundreds of Protestant denominations.) The effect is hardly confined to religions; the era of computerized mass mail and desktop publishing has seen the number of political-interest groups grow by an order of magnitude. But religions, with their aspirations of human brotherhood, uniquely highlight the paradox: communication is supposed to be a social cement, yet new communication technologies are often fragmenting...