Word: downwards
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Sounds rational, but it isn't. Whereas heading off the next bomber is a chancy business at best, we could, if we chose, adjust highway death downward with nearly the precision of a volume-control knob. We could better enforce speed limits, say, or close all bars at dusk. Implicitly, society chooses not to save lives this way. Drivers and drinkers would bridle at the inconvenience. Indeed, most states have raised the speed limit to 65 m.p.h. since 1987, adding an estimated 400 to 500 deaths a year nationwide...
...final scene, with fencing foil in hand-savoring a duel that he considers mere sport but that will bring his world crashing down. Throughout, he is marvelously complemented by Francesca Annis in the role of his mother. She gives us a queen who is convincing at each downward turn in her trajectory: as a figure of brittle jubilation when celebrating her "o'erhasty marriage" to her late husband's brother; as a sinner afflicted with a harelike trembling when confronted with Polonius' death and the "black and grained spots" of her soul; and as a creature of hopeless, heartbreaking maternal...
...chase. Last week Iacocca stunned Wall Street and the auto industry by joining with the billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, 77, in a spectacular bid to take over the nation's third largest automaker. After three months of downward drift in the value of Chrysler stock, Kerkorian offered investors $55 a share, a 40% premium over the $39.25 price it posted one day before the bid went public...
Despite some self-generated speculation that he'd run for governor of Indiana, Dan Quayle has decided that downward mobility is not in his political future. "The only office I am interested in is running for the presidency," the former vice president told C-SPAN today. "I'm going to enjoy Indiana, going to enjoy my family and see what happens." Quayle had set himself a Memorial Day deadline to decide on a GOP gubernatorial...
...collide without coordination and enforcement, the individual incentive reigns supreme. Although all nations with rights to fish in the area have a group interest in sustaining the fishery, each individual nation has an incentive to overfish, so long as all others play by the rules. This dynamic produces a downward spiral that results in the destruction of the resource...