Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist - стр. 19
Over 1.2 billion people have to defecate in the open. Surprisingly, some of those who have to defecate in the open do not mind. Some rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a social squat in the bushes. Slum-dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way through streams of sewage and take care to avoid "flying toilets", plastic bags filled with excrement that are flung with desperate abandon into the night. Nearly two-fifths of the United States' 25,000 sewer systems illegally discharged raw sewage or other nasty stuff into rivers or lakes in 2007–09, and over 40 % of the country's waters are considered dangerously polluted. Contaminated water lays low almost 20m Americans a year.
Cyprus never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
In Ghana the funereal send-off is as important as the life itself. But the costs, borne by extended families, can be punitive. Some 45 % live on less than $1 a day, 79 % on less than $2. Yet funerals tend to cost between $2,000 and $3,500. "Money measures the quality of the funeral and the family," says Sjaak van der Geest, an anthropologist. The more cash spent, the higher the reputation of the deceased and the family. Mr Okai died in hospital, then spent almost three months in the morgue, at a cost of $521: the longer your body is in the fridge, the more prestigious. The Ga king, recently buried in Accra, was on ice for 18 months; the Dagbon king, in northern Ghana, for a record four years.
Nobody knows how many homeless there are in Paris.
US Treasury Secretary Geithner's life in the trenches has produced its own vocabulary. Serious decisions are "consequential", good ideas are "cool", better ideas are "compelling" and the best ideas are at "the optimal frontier". During a crisis "plan beats no plan", jury-rigged measures in the face of unavoidable disaster are "foam on the runway", and bad outcomes are "dark". Managing public perceptions is called "theatre". "Fuck" also holds a prominent place in the Geithner lexicon, usually as an adjective, not a verb, as in "I have no fucking idea."
China's epic industrial boom will not be repeated; the days of making billions by shipping iron ore from Goa to Guangdong are over.
You have a decent job and work hard. You keep your nose clean, respect authority and have never joined a protest march. Suddenly you have the bad luck to face a cruel and seemingly impossible choice. Your superiors tell you to do something outrageous or unacceptable. Do you obey or, at grave personal cost, refuse?
China makes things you can drop on your foot. America merely designs, brands and peddles them.
As Fred Hirsch argued in his 1977 book, "The Social Limits to Growth", many good things in life are "positional". You can enjoy them only if others don't. Sometimes, a quick car, fine suit or attractive house is not enough. One must have the fastest car, finest suit or priciest house.
Consumers cannot compare what is legally produced in California with what is legally produced in Colorado – to say nothing of what is illegally sold in New York's Washington Square Park.
Ekhart, Indiana, is the RV capital of the world.
Until recently, Carrefour's supermarkets in France were run along Napoleonic lines. Strict orders emanated from its headquarters in Paris. Every store sold a similar range of products. If selling groceries were like marching an army over the Alps, this strategy would have worked brilliantly. But it isn't, and it didn't. At the big Carrefour in Monacoout went the racks of cheap luggage, of the sort chic locals would be embarrassed to see their servants carrying.