Word: powerlessness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...should we be so afraid of our own bodies? Scientists, wondrously, are mapping the genome and learning how life works at the microscopic, tweezers-of-God level. But this knowledge can make people feel more powerless than empowered. Gene-testing can tell us we're disposed to diseases we can't cure. Medical science can promise amazing treatments while rendering health care unaffordable. Bioengineered agriculture can splice a bouillabaisse's worth of fish DNA into a tomato. Fringe taps into this unease: If we are what we eat--well, what the hell...
...always adjust our retirement plan by a couple of years just to ride this out," says Linda Gallegos, 54, of Golden, Colo. She and her husband Gary have two 401(k)s. "I've been thinking, Oh, my God, this could be bad. But I feel pretty powerless to do anything. I figure, what goes down will come back up. Maybe we've seen the worst of it." Maybe. The fate of the economy could depend on how many Americans are willing...
...Hence, it is highly unlikely that Venezuela will ever be able to afford the loans and war material it receives from Russia, for even in the medium term, the junior member of this alliance is financially unsound and, increasingly, politically powerless. Despite the threatening sound of this partnership for U.S. interests, it is clear that these unlikely allies came together out of fear: Whereas the Kremlin fears diplomatic isolation, Chavez fears his end may be fast approaching. What we should all fear is what a populist like Chavez will do with Russian weaponry at a time when he is desperate...
...spend most of the remainder of the 85-page decision explaining how gays have been victimized. The court felt this was necessary in order to classify gays as a "quasi-suspect class" entitled to heightened protection under the state constitution. And so there is page after page on how powerless gays and lesbians are. "For centuries," the justices wrote, people have disliked gays. "Until not long ago, gay persons were widely regarded as deviants ... [who were] mentally ill ... [G]ay persons also face virulent homophobia that rests on nothing more than feelings of revulsion ... Insofar as gay persons play...
...Wallace was young enough when he published his first novel, The Broom of the System, in 1987, that critics who read his witty marathon sentences and then flipped to the author photo of a young man willing himself to look older - like every fake I.D. picture ever taken - were powerless: they had to dub him the next literary voice of his generation. It's exactly the kind of over-enthusiastic cliché Wallace was so good at examining and twisting and footnoting into an ironic tangent, and it was that distrust for pat declarations and easy praise that made...