Word: suddenly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Countries aren't supposed to go bankrupt. Governments, after all, are funded by the tax revenues of entire economies, and, since they manage nations, they're not likely to evaporate, Enron-style, in a sudden financial flame out, or close up shop and flee their creditors. That's why lending money to states is considered the surest bet around. Reputation aside, however, politicians abuse their ability to borrow just like any spendthrift with too many credit cards, and often pile up more bills than they can handle. Argentina, Russia, Mexico and others have stiffed their bankers over the past...
...bottom line: after one year, the economic record is mixed. On the other hand, the political outlook may be more significant ... A pessimistic view is that politics will take on a [new] level of viciousness ... An optimistic view is that a sudden lurch towards constructive bipartisan politics combined with American resilience, ingenuity and entrepreneurship will pull...
...group you thought you were going to block with ditched you, and all of a sudden you find yourself alone! Do not panic, but definitely do not send a desperate 3 a.m. e-mail over your dorm list enumerating why “those bitches can die” or anything foolish like that. Try to figure out if anyone you know from extracurricular activities has space for another person in their blocking group, and if desperate times call for desperate measures, be sure to mention the 50-inch plasma TV that you just happened to bring to school...
...Islands yesterday. Today's Chilean quake occurred on one of the more powerful fault lines in the region, where the underwater Nazca Plate in the Pacific gradually submerges beneath the westward moving South American plate. The border between these two plates is known as a thrust fault, and the sudden rubbing of the plates against each other resulted in an earthquake that ripped across an estimated 400 miles of the fault. With a Richter scale magnitude of 8.8, the Chilean quake was nearly 1,000 times stronger than the temblor that hit Haiti last month...
...caveman (if it helps, you are wearing a loincloth and have never shaved). Lightning strikes a tree near your cave, and fire threatens. What do you do? Natural selection would have favored the smart specimen who could quickly conceive answers to such a problem (or other rare catastrophes like sudden drought or flood), even if - or maybe especially if - those answers were unusual ones that few others in your tribe could generate. So, the theory goes, genes for intelligence got wrapped up with genes for unnatural thinking...