Word: exert
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Picture a pack of playing cards sorted into suits. Shuffle the cards together and deal them out into new piles, but imagine that cards with similar affinities will gravitate toward each other. The original suits will exert some pull, but cards of like denominations might also attract one another. Perhaps face cards will form a group, or even red-card black-card societies. If subtle affinities like these are allowed to play a role during the deal, what is the likelihood that you’ll deal out the original suits...
...Lankan government has been more welcoming of delegations from sympathetic countries, such as India, South Asia's regional superpower, and Japan, Sri Lanka's largest donor country. Neither has tried to exert similar public pressure. The Indian foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, met with Rajapaksa on April 24; three days later the Army announced that "combat operations have reached their conclusion," a declaration that was quickly clarified - it meant the Army would cease only heavy bombardment. On April 30, the Times of London reported that the U.S. and Britain were trying to use Sri Lanka's application for a $1.9 billion...
...This is not the first time the United States has boycotted a conference. We seem to have a history of ridiculous attempts to exert influence by not being present, as in our refusal to join the League of Nations and our boycott of the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. And, in 2001, the U.S. and Israel walked out on the first conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, because certain parts of its final resolution explicitly alluded to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as being driven by racism. Though these references were actually removed from later drafts...
...climate and energy bill now (rather than in a year), for no one stands to benefit concretely from EPA regulation. Industry groups, Republicans, and coal-state Democrats would much rather have regulation of carbon emissions come as the result of congressional legislation, a process over which they can exert some influence. Environmentalists would also prefer to have federal legislation that puts in place permanent rules governing the emission of carbon rather than leaving that decision up to whoever is in the White House. (It so happens that the current occupant is sympathetic to the position that we should limit emissions...
There may be a physiological as well as a psychological process at work here. A leading theory is that exercising self-control is so hard on your brain that, like physical exercise, it depletes glucose levels, making you feel weaker. It's possible that imagining someone who has to exert self-control, and feeling their misery, tricks your brain into believing that your own glucose levels have declined. As the study says, this trick would, "in effect, set one's internal fuel gauge to 'low' [even if] there is still plenty of fuel left in the tank...