Word: planet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Villiers: "The period of calm in which the human species was formed is only a brief drawing of the breath before the cosmic assault begins once more." So how do we maximize our time in what de Villiers calls a "perilously thin habitable layer on a vulnerable and unstable planet in a hostile neighborhood"? Plan for the worst. As he says, "Good information is the best antidote...
Toilets are a privilege that nearly half the world lacks. At least 2.6 billion people around the planet have no access to a toilet - and that doesn't just mean that they don't have a nice, heated indoor bathroom. It means they have nothing - not a public toilet, not an outhouse, not even a bucket. They defecate in public, contaminating food and drinking water, and the disease toll due to unsanitized human waste is staggering. George notes that 80% of the world's illnesses are caused by fecal matter: A single gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses...
...caste in India whose job is to clean the country's dry, filthy latrines. She regularly contracts dysentery, giardiasis and brain fever from her exposure to human waste. No one deserves that fate, and as George makes clear, the very least we can do for every person on this planet is to give them a place...
...prosperous, decent and safe. When it comes to free trade, immigration and multilateralism, though, downscale Democrats are more skeptical. In the future, the old struggle between freedom and order may play itself out on a global scale, as liberal internationalists try to establish new rules for a more interconnected planet and working-class nationalists protest that foreign bureaucrats threaten America's freedom...
Info on the Fly. If you're stuck at the airport in Amsterdam (Shipol), Brussels or Milan, there's a new way to pass the hours: Travel Station kiosks, courtesy of Lonely Planet and the Oneworld airline consortium, which allow users to download phrasebooks, audio city guides and restaurant and hotel recommendations to their smartphones or laptops. Each station has advice on 28 destinations in Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East, plus an assortment of international power converters for free laptop and phone re-charging...