Word: steps
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...slow charge" can take up to eight hours and may jack up an electric bill the equivalent of 2 kilowatts per month. Most e-car owners will eventually want to plug in their faster, highway-approved EVs into new rapid-charging, 220-volt garage chargers. But that requires another step: finding a certified electrician and several thousand more dollars to install the add-on feature to the home or garage...
...swear cathartically, says Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and author of The Stuff of Thought, an exploration of the psychology of language. Pinker distinguishes cathartic cursing from using profanity descriptively, idiomatically, abusively or for emphasis, and points to similar behavior in animals that suggests its evolutionary roots. If you step on a dog or cat's tail, it will let out a sharp yelp of pain, for example. "Swearing probably comes from a very primitive reflex that evolved in animals," Pinker says. "In humans, our vocal tract has been hijacked by our language skills," so instead of barking...
...frontal lobes, which inhibit these responses," Sidtis explains. But in certain circumstances - either because we don't bother to inhibit them or because the shock of pain or discomfort momentarily surpasses the safeguards - our impulse for obscenity takes over. "In that way, it's like the dog when you step on his tail," Sidtis says...
...years to come. On one side, the U.S. Department of Justice is accusing Swiss banking giant UBS of helping wealthy Americans hide billions of dollars from the tax man and insisting that the bank reveal their identities. On the other, the Swiss government is threatening to step in to protect the country's famous secrecy laws. The two have until Aug. 3 to come up with an agreement - or continue the fight in court...
...terms of the treaty between the two countries that permits an exchange of information on tax matters only in individual cases where a specific and justified request is made. "The blocking order that the Swiss government is prepared to issue would be a first, but it's a reasonable step to take in light of the IRS's threatened disregard for international treaties and provisions of Swiss law," says James Nason, spokesman for the Swiss Banking Association (SBA), a trade group for Switzerland's financial institutions. (Read "The Swiss Question Their Once Proud Banks...