Word: preference
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...prefer it when she's a classy starlet. I don't really like her hard metal stuff, or when she doesn't brush her hair." FRANCES COBAIN, 13-year-old daughter of singer Courtney Love, on her mother's fashion sense
Employers' health-care costs rose an average 12% last year. To stem the growth of medical payouts, firms increasingly focus on keeping workers healthy. "Companies prefer action rather than reaction," says Dallas Salisbury, CEO of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. "They're using more and more triggers, bribes, gimmicks and penalties to promote wellness offerings." Two-thirds provide such benefits. Some hand out pedometers to encourage workers to walk more. Others help with yoga instruction, massage and meditation. And many extend insurance discounts for employees who take smoking-cessation classes...
Moreover, what is normally preferable in mega companies--youth and employees working in traditional gender roles--is less important in the world of the self-employed, points out Michael Stull, who directs a center for entrepreneurship at California State University at San Bernardino. "Clients and customers don't care if you have gray hair and if you're a man running a business in a woman's world or vice versa," Stull says. "They want to know that you have experience and that you can do the job better than anyone else, and often prefer someone who is older...
Some reasons for the big veteran drive extend beyond mere patriotism. George Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been advising Democrats, suggests that voters often see their party in the style of a "nurturing parent" but, in a post--Sept. 11 world, prefer the "strict father" governance embraced by Republicans. In less Freudian terms, Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says "the military and these other institutions are greatly respected." Hence the Democrats' netting a former CIA officer in Illinois and a former FBI agent in Minnesota, whistle-blower Coleen...
...wanted to live away from the city, they were given two choices by the Israeli agency that oversaw the absorption of newcomers: the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip, captured territories that the Labor government of the time wanted to cement under Israeli control. "They said, Do you prefer cows or tomatoes?" recalls Bryna. "We decided, tomatoes. It was a practical decision. We found work, a house, a community we could help build...