Word: formulaic
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...silliness on Italian TV. They have bedazzled viewers since the 1980s, when the television stations of Silvio Berlusconi, a mere media mogul before entering politics, revolutionized the airwaves by putting Italians on a diet of American soap operas, football and sex all over his Mediaset empire. But the formula was about more than TV ratings; it also boosted Berlusconi's political fortunes. (See pictures of Berlusconi and the politics...
...long run of relative obscurity, he's been getting lots of attention. So have other believers in cycles and waves: the New Yorker recently expended 10 pages on Martin Armstrong, a self-taught forecaster (currently imprisoned for fraud) who made several eerily on-the-mark calls using a formula based on the mathematical constant pi. Prechter appeared in that piece too, but only briefly. He comes across as too reasonable to play a starring role in such a contorted tale. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...addition, a very particular quirk in the Medicaid formula has essentially penalized Louisiana for the recovery efforts going on in the state. Because of the large influx of insurance money and federal grants after Katrina, the per-capita income of Louisiana appeared to rise. In Landrieu’s own words, this formula makes Louisiana seem like Connecticut even though it remains one of the poorest states in the country. This has triggered a readjustment of the amount that the federal government gives to Louisiana, which essentially means that Louisiana will have to come up with an extra $472 million...
...month trial involving 107 patients, the physicians showed that streptomycin curbed the number of deaths from TB. That success was short-lived: the TB bacilli quickly became resistant to the drug, blossoming into raging infections. Crofton, however, had the insight to combine streptomycin with another new antibiotic--a formula that was to become the blueprint for combination therapy. That approach still forms the cornerstone of TB treatment and served as the inspiration for similar multipronged attacks on serious illnesses, like treating cancer with chemotherapy agents and battling HIV with antiviral drugs...
...revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads. "People feel there's somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we'll find it, and all will be O.K.," Honoré observes. "Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so different, every family is different? Parents need to block out the sound...