Word: useful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Congresswomen Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island, who hopes to unseat Senator Claiborne Pell, and Lynn Martin of Illinois, who plans to run for the Senate. Then, as he flew back to Washington, he vetoed the budget bill for the District of Columbia because it contained a provision that would use city funds to pay for abortions for poor women. It was Bush's fourth abortion-related veto this year...
...such criticism is merely evidence that he is on the right track. "My job," he says, "is to point out some of the problems that might arise with new technologies. Scientists should show us how these new technologies work. Then society, not scientists, should decide if it wants to use them. Scientists are not gods; they're just technicians. They're just human beings, with all the good and bad intentions of everyone else. If you criticize them at all, you're stopping the drive toward utopia. But there has to be both sides...
...social activism: lawsuits, petitions, debates, lectures and media manipulations. Each year the three attorneys on the staff of his Washington- based Foundation on Economic Trends file about six lawsuits and threaten more. Among other causes, he has battled surrogate motherhood, animal patenting and agricultural experiments involving open-air use of genetically altered bacteria. He tried to delay the launch of the Galileo spacecraft by warning that a shuttle explosion could rain plutonium on Florida. In Wisconsin he has helped start a boycott of dairy products from cows that are being fed a genetically engineered growth hormone. Indeed, Rifkin's success...
Outside the courtroom, Rifkin warned that the widespread use of ice-minus would lead to all sorts of natural disasters, including the disruption of rainfall patterns. (Lindow and his backers say this is hogwash. They note that the ice-fighting bacteria, developed into a commercial product called Frostban, was sprayed on a test field in 1987. As they predicted, it proved harmless.) Typically, Rifkin would plunge into a scientific setting, armed with papers from dissident researchers, and warn about the potentially catastrophic consequences of inadequately regulated research. Says geneticist Zinder: "The accusations are made simply, with simple words...
...negotiating table. That is probably a forlorn hope, even though the rebels' losses in the offensive may exceed 1,000. If nothing else, the rebels proved they can disrupt life in El Salvador whenever they choose. They have also shown that the government is all too willing to use its heavy firepower when the war is being fought in poor neighborhoods but is reluctant to strafe and bomb a rich enclave like Escalon, where support for the governing ARENA party is high...