Word: presentism
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...last year, 113 out of the 173 deceased died in their homes. The "stay or go" approach has a long history in rural Australia, and gradually became official policy after the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in southeastern Australia. "If someone was present in a house, it had a 90% chance of surviving the fire - protecting the occupants in the process - while many perished leaving at the last minute," says John Handmer, director of the Centre for Risk and Community Safety at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology who conducted a review of the 'stay or go' policy for the Bushfire...
...Kevin Costner was sacrificed, despite his considerable star power. Sometimes it's a mudslide (Nights in Rodanthe, the worst of the five) or a secret illness (A Walk to Remember, the sweetest) or class warfare (The Notebook, the sexiest). Either way, the guiding hand of Erich Segal is always present, and the cast must include an Ali MacGraw type, someone famous taking a mortal or psychological hit for the sake of getting our hankies wet. (See who will win at the Oscars...
...before she even knew which party he belonged to. But she knew his core belief: the government should be parsimonious with voters' money. His abhorrence of spending led to him sleeping in his Washington office on a futon, buying her a used bike as a combined birthday and Christmas present and returning a diamond necklace he'd purchased sight unseen - through a friend - because he ultimately decided it wasn't worth what he'd paid. Of course, none of this quite explains why he rarely remembered her birthday (Sept. 11) until after...
Obama claims to have scuttled Constellation in order to replace it with a partially privatized space program. But this is Washington doublespeak at its worst and nothing less than a cover for doing away with the program. Like national defense and fire departments, space exploration is at present a public good, optimally undertaken by governments. The private space industry has a very important role to play but it cannot and should not replace the role of government—the two are synergistic...
...elite in the Sinhalese community are deeply frustrated now with the direction of the country. Sri Lanka did not need a presidential election for reconciliation with Tamils. The post-electoral violence, intimidation, and disenfranchisement of Tamils are seen as a precursor for what the Tamils can expect from the present rulers in the days to come. The anti-democratic excesses of the current regime are likely to increase during the parliamentary election season...