Word: planet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recently saw somewhat of a panic with swine flu. Are viruses the thing that's going to wipe this planet clean, as opposed to nuclear bombs? It certainly is the one threat that seems to allow us to be irrational about things. A nuclear attack requires a device, it can be intercepted, it can only affect a certain area. There is a logic to the way it spreads. But a virus grows exponentially. Every time it expands, there's a casualty. It's closer to a panic - closer, therefore, to a very primal fear...
Many people on both the right and the left like to portray environmentalism as sacrifice - denying oneself some kind of pleasure (a heated pool, extra space in an SUV, the convenience of dry cleaning) in order to help save the planet. Conservatives do so partly because they believe pursuing self-interest in the form of material pleasures is necessary for the proper functioning of markets. Liberals do so because they believe rampant materialism can distort the proper functioning of democracies (and because "Yes We Can" T shirts don't need dry cleaning anyway). But what if environmentalism didn't really...
Idealistic environmentalists may not like these findings, but they should pay attention to them. Many hotels appeal to guests to reuse their towels with little cards asking them to help protect the planet. But as evolutionary psychologist Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota helped show in a 2008 Journal of Consumer Research paper (here's a PDF), hotel patrons are much more likely to reuse towels when informed that a majority of hotel guests do so than when they are merely asked to help save the environment...
...Although news reports tried to convince me that Republicans were in power, I saw very little Republican presence on campus, and didn’t know any personally. Although I would meet a few eventually, the political uniformity reinforced my notion of Harvard as a somewhat sheltered planet...
...designate us as experts also qualify us to decide what the next generation should know. We mime a process by which tomorrow’s ruling class will also make such undemocratic but “expertly-informed” decisions about the poor and working people of the planet. The Harvard scholars who populated the Kennedy and Johnson administrations during the Vietnam War provide ample evidence that our expertise can bear grievous results. One hopes that the Harvard experts now managing the economy from Washington will do a better job, their past contributions to the global economic crisis notwithstanding...