Word: pointed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...opening hectic sequence, we learn that Rosetta has been fired, for no apparent reason, from her job working at a factory. From there she attempts to secure other forms of work, but is continually turned down. The search continues, eventually becoming an obsession in her young life, to the point that Rosetta loses touch with her mother, her best friend, and eventually herself. Fortunately, in examining the minute details of this deplorable world, the narrative begins to extrapolate beyond mere plot points, and becomes a searing indictment of the system that Rosetta attempts to indict...
...that the world, and the WTO negotiations, are a mix of principle and cynicism is pretty commonplace, but takes us only part of the way to understand the complexity of the debates in Seattle. There are a series of truly unsolved problems. Anti-WTO activists are wrong, as a point of fact, to see the WTO as a faceless bureaucracy setting the world's rules, but they are right that the negotiating process, by which the U.S. and other countries bargain over trade standards, is opaque and mostly hidden from view. Its not the WTO's bureaucracy per se that...
...second problem is one of standards. The activists are incensed that the WTO dispute settlement boards can rule that duly enacted U.S. laws are contrary to the WTO. This they claim is undemocratic on its face. But the critique is foolish: the whole point of international trade agreements is to bind the parties to a set of shared standards (that they have mutually adopted), so that they don't engage in unilateral actions to the detriment of others. The fact that such unilateral actions are democratically enacted within a member country is beside the point...
...Because Vegas is attracting so many vacationers, it can afford to be more exclusive. Every new hotel is making a point to sell only to the "sophisticated" crowd--at the recently built Monte Carlo, Bellagio, Venetian and Paris hotels, there are no "showgirl" theatrics, the restaurants all demand at least $35 per person, Gucci and Versace dominate the in-hotel shopping malls and the miminum blackjack bet is $10. The cheesy glitz and glamour of the '80s Vegas has dissolved into a decadent celebration of pretentiousness in the '90s Vegas...
...exercise sequences are cumulative, so they can be broken up into short segments and performed easily during any point...