Word: serious
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...This new African impatience may be having an effect. In his inauguration speech, Mugabe unexpectedly raised the possibility of sharing power with the opposition. "It is my hope that sooner rather than later, we shall as diverse political parties hold consultations toward such serious dialogue as will minimise our differences and enhance the area of unity and cooperation," he said. Mugabe's sudden appetite for peaceful talks may be mere rhetoric; certainly, no one expects "Uncle Bob" to step down anytime soon. But it could be that even he, the most ferocious of the dinosaurs, realizes that their...
...Serious problems remain, however. Some Japanese firms are wary of selling their best technology to China out of a justified fear that it could be stolen. Beijing's lax protection of intellectual-property rights "is the biggie that is hampering technology transfer into China," says Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center. In other cases, such as solar-power generation, the technology is simply too expensive for China...
...chose him--after a succession of Presidents: Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Kennedy, as well as explorers Lewis and Clark and inventor Ben Franklin--because he represents a vital tradition in American politics and culture: the comedic commentator on serious matters, the funnyman as our collective conscience who can utter uncomfortable truths that more solemn critics evade. In an election year when so many Americans are getting their news from nontraditional sources, Twain is the godfather of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as well as the comic voices who influenced them, from Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Kurt Vonnegut...
Travel writing was lucrative, but novels were what serious literary men were expected to produce, and from the start Twain longed to be taken seriously, to be regarded as more than "merely" a humorist. So by 1873 he had rolled out his first novel, The Gilded Age, which he co-wrote with a Connecticut journalist, Charles Dudley Warner. With that book's title, Twain gave the post--Civil War era, a time of boundless greed and opportunism, the name it still has and that it shares, in some quarters, with the era we seem to be willy-nilly emerging from...
...trappings of a successful man. When the publishing royalties came pouring in, he built in Hartford, Conn., a big, ornate, financially burdensome house in a style that's been called "steamboat Gothic." It has been fully open to the public since 1974, but recently it has run into serious financial difficulties. A few years ago the group that maintains the house added an expensive visitors' center. Now it can't afford the upkeep, and there's a danger that the house will have to close...