Word: scheme
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...quick survey of just a few of the financial industry’s titans yields nothing but front-page scandals—from Bernard Madoff, the mysterious asset manager “extraordinaire” who was revealed to be the mastermind behind a wealth-draining Ponzi scheme, to John Thain, the former Merrill Lynch CEO who spent a reported $1.2 million redecorating his office suite (complete with a $35,000 commode) at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer while his company posted incredible losses...
...employees, and shareholders. One might rightly characterize this profiteering spirit as “greed,” but, prior to the recent economic meltdown, such greed was never an issue for the public. Bernard Madoff’s investors did not care if their money fueled a Ponzi scheme as long as they received their regular returns. Shareholders of Merrill Lynch were unbothered as the company’s managers liberally applied corporate funds to beautify their offices, as long as they were paid their quarterly dividends...
...move follows a monthlong campaign by atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers that saw 800 London buses plastered with a less God-fearing slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Ariane Sherine, an atheist and London-based comedy writer, devised the scheme after seeing a Christian bus advertisement. "It basically said that unless you believe this, you're going to end up suffering," she says of a pro-Jesus poster that featured what she describes as a "fiery apocalyptic sunset." "Our campaign provides reassurance for people who might be agnostic and don't quite believe...
...Similar atheist campaigns have run in Barcelona, Madrid and Washington, D.C. But since its Jan. 6 launch, the London scheme has been credited with inspiring atheist bus campaigns in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany and Italy, where next month posters in Genoa will read, "The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that we do not need him." The Genoa campaign prompted Father Gianfranco Calabrese, a spokesman for the Archbishop of Genoa, to speak out against what many opponents of the campaign call blasphemy. "There are some methods which promote dialogue and others which feed intolerance...
...Livio concedes on his first page that the notion of God as a mathematician is “neither a philosophical attempt to define God… nor a shrewd scheme to intimidate math phobics.” Instead, Livio is trying to entice lay readers to crack open his book and appreciate the “omnipresence and omnipotent powers of mathematics.” Its focus is the impressive notion that “the same global, coherent mathematics” can be used by a wide variety of scientists, engineers, economists, and doctors to explain such seemingly...