Word: threats
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...judgment of geologists as to whether homeowners should be allowed to rebuild on the fractured hillsides, where landslides may now become a perennial headache. Many residents are nonetheless eager to rebuild. True to their reputation for mellowness and impregnable cool, Californians are generally unfazed by the fault-line threat...
...this the same California that has been sensitive to the risks from every kind of environmental threat? Three years ago, the state's voters approved Proposition 65, a law that mandates warning labels on any substance found to carry a 1-in-100,000 lifetime risk of causing cancer. As a result, cautionary notices now appear on gasoline pumps, in hardware and grocery stores and on the walls of Napa Valley wineries...
...fact, Californians are no different from other Americans when it comes to risk. The national temperament seems to have a fault line all its own. On one side of that psychic divide, Americans shrug off demonstrable threats: they build houses on eroding beaches, speed without wearing seat belts, go hang gliding and expose themselves to the cancer-causing rays of the sun. On the other side, they suffer a bad case of the jitters about the smallest threat to personal well-being. They flee from apples that might bear a trace of Alar and fret about radon, nuclear power...
Experts on risk perception generally agree that people tend to be less concerned about dangers they incur voluntarily, like cigarette smoking and fast driving. They are more resentful of risks they feel have been imposed upon them, like the threat of mishaps at a nearby nuclear plant. They are more sensitive to risks they can control -- for instance, through laws that ban pesticides or require safety warnings -- than they are to those they feel they can do nothing about -- like acts of nature. "People choose what to fear," says Aaron Wildavsky, co-author of Risk and Culture. "What...
...House of Representatives gymnasium for sexual frolics. Though editor in chief Arnaud de Borchgrave bristles at the notion that the Times is turning to tabloid-style journalism to make its mark in the nation's capital, he slyly promises "more to come." Some Washingtonians may take that as a threat...