Word: shells
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed - Iraq's natural resources are only now emerging as spoils of war. As U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from the country next year, some of the world's biggest energy companies, among them ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, are racing to lock up multibillion-dollar deals with officials in Baghdad that will allow them to exploit the country's giant oil fields. The deals will not only allow Big Oil to return to Iraq for the first time since Saddam nationalized the industry in 1972. By modernizing a production system...
...trail have discovered that embezzled funds were channeled into 1,065 properties valued at $74 million, including some 6,000 acres of land, 40,000 sq. yd. of housing plots, and 90,000 sq. ft. of other developed real estate. The properties, bought in the name of some 80 shell companies, included prime commercial plots in and around Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Nagpur. (See the worst business deals...
...lure of cheap goods, though, is incredibly strong, even once we've reached the point of substantial creature comfort. In her book Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, writer Ellen Ruppel Shell devotes the better part of two chapters to how inexpensive goods mess with our minds. She describes one experiment in which researchers used brain scans to show that the joy of a discounted item comes before it's bought; by the time a person is at home with his new thing, the luster is gone. On Black Friday, I watched shoppers on TV proudly state how much...
...long they expected any of their stuff to last. For that's the other big trade-off we make for low-priced goods-often cheap simply means cheap. Shell likes to tell the story of how she once bought three blenders in quick succession; the flimsy blades were no match for the ice that goes into smoothies. When "low cost" is the marketing trope we most respond to, quality easily falls by the wayside. And that state of affairs, Shell concludes based on the response to her book, bothers no one as much as the less affluent people who inexpensive...
...free mimosa or Bloody Mary as part of the deal, and more and more eateries are offering unlimited cocktails. Referred to as "drunk," "boozy," or "bottomless" brunch, restaurants in many of the country's larger cities are using all-you-can-drink cocktails to entice more people to shell out for eggs Benedict or a Belgian waffle. After all, says Village Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema, "Sunday brunch is just a license to continue Saturday's night of drinking." (See what makes you eat more food...