Word: totems
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...Western and Northern European countries began to adopt certain favorable social policies. There is universal health insurance in most of these societies - that, of course, makes a difference in health care. You can also consider income inequality in America, since people who are at the low end of the totem pole have considerable adversity making ends meet. I suspect the difference [in height between Americans and Europeans] is due to both diet and health care...
...getting paid for it. I think a lot of people take it for granted that the volunteer firefighters that came to their house were not actually paid at all. It's the thing I've always said about firefighters: they're the last guys on the totem pole...
...collaboration between U.S. and Dutch researchers, finds that if people feel powerful in their roles, they may be less likely to make on-the-job errors - like administering the wrong medication to a patient. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the study suggests that people at the bottom of the workplace totem pole don't end up there for lack of ability, but rather that being low and powerless in a hierarchy leads to more mistakes. It's a finding that surprised even the study's authors. "I'll be totally honest. When we started this research," says Adam Galinsky...
...funny thing to have hanging under the branches of stately old Harvard trees. The tire swing has become the pagan totem of our spring rite, and we—its fanatics—flock to it out of simple glee or hipster irony. Like a hypnotic pendulum lulling away the vulgarities of everyday stress, the tire swing beckons us to Yardfest in a more complex way than the food monopoly and in a more subtle way than the rap stars. One can imagine Yardfest without the dining services’ cornucopia, without the spectacle of saccharine country and ironic...
...muddling passerby will accidentally wander into the swing’s ambit and, after a tussle of shouts, duck for safety. Sometimes the swing will make rubber-to-skull contact, and an uncomfortable and embarrassed student will bowl over onto the grass. In the true fashion of a totem, though, the gentle swinging will stir deep memories in all of us—memories of childhoods real or imagined, individual and collective apparitions of an idyllic pastoral existence...