Word: ultra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Before you pen that acidulous letter about how we’re all blind ultra-liberal children of privilege/zealot communists bent on societal destruction, read on: I would actually propose that the Commonwealth “marry” no one—as it has no business trafficking in areas with such religious implication and passion—and rather secure the right of civil union for all of its citizens, leaving the churches/synagogues/temples to decide their definition of marriage...
...Although India dominates the polishing business, it produces almost none of the world's diamonds. Most rough stones are mined in Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Russia, and then find their way to Antwerp, where ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews form the nerve center of the international diamond trade. With contacts from Tel Aviv to New York City, Hasidic businessmen have controlled the polishing and selling of diamonds for generations?until, that is, the Indians began butting...
...Dubai's tourist boom is part of a bold plan to transform the tiny city-state (part of the United Arab Emirates) into a Middle Eastern Singapore?that is, an ultra-efficient regional service center and tourist destination that benefits from the innovative yet unobtrusive hand of a benevolent leader. In Dubai that would be Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ambitious Crown Prince whose dreams for Dubai leave those of most other gulf princes in the camel age. "They have been bold, and they have been strategic," acknowledges Sheik Mohammed, but he adds, "I have achieved only...
...city of 6.8 million people has been under the reign?but not the reins?of communist China. It is governed by its own people under British-bequeathed laws, and its "one country, two systems" trial has largely succeeded. Life goes on as it did before 1997?hectic, laissez-faire, ultra-capitalistic. Very, very few people complain about being citizens of the People's Republic...
Novelists right now are kind of like French painters in the 19th century. Back then you had your ultra-smooth academic perfectionists--your Ingres, your David--on one side, painting pictures so slick, they look as if they have been freshly buffed and polyurethaned. Then along came the Impressionists, with their rough-textured, gnarly, worked-looking canvases. Among contemporary fiction writers we have purveyors of lapidary, polished, M.F.A.-perfect prose--John Updike, Alice Munro--and on the other side, a grab bag of avant-gardists (like David Foster Wallace), witty pyrotechnicians (Jonathan Franzen) and operatic monologists (Toni Morrison) who fling...