Word: problem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...proposing a solution to this problem, you are asking people to change their lifestyles. How feasible is that...
Part of the problem we have with evaluating risk, scientists say, is that we're moving through the modern world with what is, in many respects, a prehistoric brain. We may think we've grown accustomed to living in a predator-free environment in which most of the dangers of the wild have been driven away or fenced off, but our central nervous system--evolving at a glacial pace--hasn't got the message...
...news broadcasts or an escalation of the federal terrorism-threat level from orange to red. It's when the risk and the consequences of our response unfold more slowly, experts say, that our analytic system kicks in. This gives us plenty of opportunity to overthink--or underthink--the problem, and this is where we start to bollix things...
...problem with habituation is that it can also lead us to go to the other extreme, worrying not too much but too little. Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina brought calls to build impregnable walls against such tragedies ever occurring again. But despite the vows, both New Orleans and the nation's security apparatus remain dangerously leaky. "People call these crises wake-up calls," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. "But they're more like snooze alarms. We get agitated...
...costing up to $3.5 billion. But there's relatively little the city can do about its greatest environmental scourge: an estimated 80% of its air pollution drifts in from mainland China's Guangdong province. "You can clean up your own backyard," White says, "but there's still this enormous problem across the river...