Word: basic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...From the wooden boxes of the 1920s to the hulking contraptions of today, Japan's basic vending business has long been the same: someone had a yen (and some coins) and someone else had to drive around and restock those hungry machines with bottles, underwear or dried squid. Now, the paradigm-busting idea is that a growing number of vending machines are beginning to dispense digital data, altering the economics of a business once largely dependent upon a complex system of resale and deliveries. As vending machines lumber into the information age, future purchases will just as likely come...
...other fossil fuels, we can use alternative energy sources. If we have no clean, drinkable water, we are doomed. As the 6 billion passengers aboard Spaceship Earth enter a complex new century, few issues are as fundamental as water. We are falling far short of the most basic humanitarian goals: sufficient and affordable clean water, food and energy for everyone. "I cannot bear to watch the nations cry," wrote Derek Walcott, the Caribbean-born Nobel laureate, whose poetry often reflects his African heritage. With regional disputes over water resources increasing, and people and ecosystems alike facing urgent, immense challenges, business...
...Access to adequate, unpolluted water is increasingly being viewed in development circles as a basic human right, something that governments must ensure. As Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the dam commission: "In an age of globalization, greater efforts can and must be made to reconcile the need for economic growth with the need to protect the dignity of individuals, the cultural heritage of communities and the health of the environment we all share." For billions of people, that - like water itself - is a matter of life and death...
...basic premise behind the death penalty—that those who take an innocent life deserve to lose their own—implodes when confronted with the statistical certitude of conviction error. If a citizen should lose his life for killing an innocent person, what should be the state’s punishment for the same offense? Certainly someone must pay for the murder of an innocent woman or man. But who? The judge and jury? The lawyers and police? All of us? From the sheer number of wrongly convicted citizens, we know that innocent people will be?...
...question you will constantly hear debated in Bogota is whether or not the FARC has surface-to-air missiles. With a multibillion-dollar bank account, it can clearly afford them. For U.S. planners--and American contract pilots--it's a big worry. It exposes the U.S. to a basic problem of policy: while U.S.-supplied planes and their American-trained crews are allowed to get involved with antidrug missions, they are not, by law, allowed anywhere near counterinsurgency operations. Thus, for instance, the U.S. Blackhawks in Plan Colombia can be used to hit FARC drug operations but not other FARC...