Word: standardization
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...Smith said he is confident that Sweet has set a standard for excellence that will ease the entrance of the next dean for administration and finance. Plus, Sweet’s successor will know full well the severity of the current fiscal picture, which only became fully clear after Sweet arrived at Harvard...
...family life is the imperishable dream of being married forever, grabbing hold of the golden ring of lasting partnership. The low-income mothers studied by Kefalas and co-author Kathryn Edin spoke repeatedly of their wish to get married; they "cherish marriage and hold it to an impossibly high standard," the authors found, but too often forgo it as a result. Meanwhile, the middle class has spent the past 2½ decades - during which the divorce culture became a fact of life - turning weddings into overwrought exercises in consumer spending, as if by just plunking down enough cash...
...America's obsession with high-profile marriage flameouts - the Gosselins and the Sanfords and the Edwardses - reflects a collective ambivalence toward the institution: our wish that we could land ourselves in a lasting union, mixed with our feeling of vindication, or even relief, when a standard bearer for the "traditional family" fails to pull it off. This is ultimately self-defeating. It is time instead to come to terms with both our unrealistic expectations for a happy marriage and our equally unrealistic beliefs about the consequences of walking away from the families we build. (See pictures of classic weddings...
...food had to be lowbrow, think again. Not when you can enjoy tapas from White Castle, sushi from Popeye's or quiche from Burger King. Of course, chains don't actually serve those delicacies, but a new website offers the next best thing: teaching budget foodies how to take standard drive-thru fare and slice, strip, mix and otherwise recreate it to look gourmet. Fancy Fast Food offers meticulously detailed, elegantly photographed recipes that can transform, say, a Big Mac Extra Value Meal into "McSteak & Potatoes" (the "potatoes" being the hamburger bun and french fries pureed in a food processor...
...every barrel pumped in Iraq rather than the $4-a-barrel rate sought by oil executives. Chevron, which had negotiated for a year to develop Iraq's second-biggest field, West Qurna, pulled out of the deal on Tuesday, saying it had not met the company's "standard investment criteria." French giant Total and Spain's Repsol also withdrew after failing to secure a better deal from the Iraqis, leaving Baghdad high and dry. "[The Iraqis] approached this auction with a bit of arrogance," Younsi says. "They thought oil companies would do absolutely anything to get into Iraq...