Word: sham
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Electoral democracy will never be the most Ockham-friendly thing, nor is it designed to be. Go in search of true political parsimony and you wind up with Putin's one-party dominance or Hussein's sham elections or North Korea's 50 years of dynastic nuttiness. But somewhere between the chaos and complexity of American elections and the stultifying simplicity of phony elections is the serenity and sanity of rational elections. Cue the balloons - quietly...
...most intriguing processes in medicine is the placebo effect: the healing power of a sham therapy, when it's offered to patients with the suggestion that it will help. Neuroscientists have even observed where and how the placebo effect may work in the brain. In one recent study by University of Michigan researchers, participants who were told they would receive painkillers showed increased production of endorphins - the brain's natural pain reliever - even though they got no analgesic at all. It makes sense. Most people can attest that the mere expectation of relief can somehow prompt the body to respond...
...that they learn how to handle it." Despite his authoritarian bent, Chavez (whose current and apparently last term ends in 2012) had always insisted he was a democrat - that he was, in fact, forging "a more genuine democracy" in a nation that had in many ways been a sham democracy typical of a number of Latin American countries. His presidential election victories - in 1998, 2000 and 2006, as well as his victory over an attempt to recall him in a 2004 referendum - were all recognized by credible international observers; and that conferred on him a democratic legitimacy that helped blunt...
...priorities. At the top of their list is reform of the Administrative Board of Harvard College, Harvard’s unjust disciplinary tribunal. Although Pilbeam has created a committee of three anonymous faculty members to reform the Ad Board, the committee, like the Ad Board itself, seems largely a sham. Sundquist and Sarafa are committed to pushing for meaningful reform to the Ad Board. Their know-how and drive are the best opportunity the student body has to enact real change to the Ad Board. Beyond the Ad Board, improving mental health services on campus and streamlining the convoluted student...
...military coup eight years ago, vowing to stay on only as long as it took to stamp out corruption and repair the economy. He has delivered somewhat on both fronts. But his other major pledge - to not "allow the people to be taken back to the era of sham democracy, but to a true one" - rings hollow. Musharraf has bequeathed to Pakistan a tattered constitution, patched with amendments and filled now with so many loopholes justifying his rule that it better resembles a crocheted doily, ready to be thrown over whatever ugliness the next ruler creates in the pursuit...