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Like a lot of carless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always assumed that the anger is genuine. But amid the recent mania over prices hitting $4 a gallon, I decided to figure out whether this fury is economically rational. So I took a look at data from the Census Bureau, which conducts a quarterly survey of American spending habits. During these last few years of historically high oil prices, Americans spent about $40 a week, or $2,000 a year, on gas. That"s around 5 percent of our overall spending. It"s less than half of what we spend on restaurants and entertainment.High gas prices must be forcing Americans to cut back in other ways, right That"s what the economist Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan wondered. He looked at personal spending habits during periods of high energy prices and discovered that "somewhat surprisingly, there is no significant decline in total expenditures on recreation," which was one place they expected to find frugality. In other words, Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil.While sustained high gas prices would certainly produce some turmoil, so would potential spikes in countless other globally traded commodities. But there"s a reason populist outcries don"t start around soybean prices or magnesium spikes. Oil is the only volatile commodity that most Americans deal with directly: we are buffered from most other price swings by our relative wealth. Unlike people in poor countries, consumers here don"t generally buy raw commodity foods; we buy our meals processed or prepared. With most goods, the commodity price has even less impact on cost. "When people buy a phone," Kilian says, "they don"t buy the copper that makes the wiring."With gas, though, hurtling prices are unavoidable. Every day, U. S. drivers pay a price determined by forces all over the world that are hard to understand and harder for the United States to control. Even if we invested in better refineries and exploited every possible energy source, from the Keystone pipeline to the Alaskan wilderness, the impact could be minimal. It could eventually lower prices at the pump—but only if nothing else affects them, like OPEC lowering its production to drive prices back up again. The price of oil is, of course, affected by hundreds of interrelated factors.Many analysts I"ve spoken with suggest that oil prices should fall fairly soon. This will be welcome news to the less-fortunate American families who are notimperviousto the price at the pump and to anyone who claims to be pinching pennies because of gas. But as unpopular as it may sound, the best possible future for most Americans may involve much higher gas prices. As billions of people, throughout the world, enter the middle class in the coming decades, there will be an enormous increase in the demand for gas. This, along with rising environmental considerations, is likely to send the prices far higher than they are today. The word "impervious" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to ______.
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At work, as in life, attractive women get a lot of good lucks. Studies have shown that they are more likely to be 1 than their plain-Jane colleagues because people tend to project 2 traits 3 them, such as a sensitive heart and a cool head, they may also be at a/an 4 in job interviews. But research suggests otherwise.Brad Hanks at Georgia State University looked at what happens when job hunters include photos with their resume, as is the 5 in much of Europe and Asia. The pair sent made-up applications to over 2,500 real-life 6 . For each job, they sent two very similar resume, one with a photo, one without. Subjects had previously been graded for their attractiveness.For men, the results were 7 expected. Hunks were more likely to be called for an interview if they included a photo. Ugly men were better off not including one. However, for women this was 8 Attractive females were less likely to be offered an interview if they included a mugshot. When applying directly to a company (rather than through an agency) an attractive woman would need to send out 11 CVs on average 9 getting an interview; a/an 10 qualified plain one just seven.At first, Mr. Hanks considered 11 he calls the "dumb-blonde hypothesis"—that people 12 beautiful women to be stupid. 13 , the photos had also been rated on how 14 people thought each subject looked; there was no 15 between perceived intellect and beauty.So the cause of the discrimination must 16 elsewhere. Human resources departments tend to be 17 mostly by women. Indeed, in the Israeli study, 93% of those tasked with selecting whom to invite for an interview were female. The researchers" unavoidable—and unpalatable—conclusion is that old-fashioned 18 led the women to discriminate 19 pretty candidates.So should attractive women simply attach photos that make them look dowdy No. Better, says Mr. Hanks, to discourage the practice of including a photo altogether. Companies might even consider the 20 model used in the Belgian public sector, where CVs do not even include the candidate"s name.
A. They who know nothing listen moreB. Women support is essentialC. Women who create pink-collar industryD. Women: backbone for e-commerceE. Men: pretended fashion expertsF. Men: technology savvy in fashion businessG. New form of gender equality 1 According to a 2010 report from comScore, women spend more time online than men, and they"re overrepresented in social networking, gaming, photos, blogs, and retail. Not only do women spend time online, they spend money, too—female customers make up 61% of online transactions. In a TechCrunch article on the topic, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Arleen Lee called women the "rocket fuel" of e-commerce. "Especially when it comes to social and shopping," Lee explains, "women rule the Internet." 2 Hence the surge in "pink-collar" start-ups—businesses in traditionally feminine industries like fashion, beauty, and shopping. But women aren"t the only tech entrepreneurs with their eyes on female customers. From the men behind Pinterest to the dudes who started Shoe Dazzle, smart men are defying gender stereotypes in the pursuit of great business and jumping at the chance to cash in on pink-collar opportunities.Nils Johnson is one of the three male co-founders of Beautylish, a beauty-focused social network. What attracted three men to the female-dominated cosmetics industry "Most engineers are guys, so they think about products for guys," Johnson explains. "When we thought about the intersection of technology and beauty, we saw a large opportunity in a market that was significantly underserved."Josh Berman and Diego Berdakin are another great example: The duo took their expertise in technology and proximity to the heart of Hollywood and identified a huge opportunity to revolutionize e-commerce. The result was Beachmint, a designer-curated social-commerce site, which catered exclusively to women." The founders never pretended to be fashion experts," says Ara Katz, Beachmint"s Head of Creative and Partnerships. "Their strengths are in technology and operations." 3 When I asked Johnson whether he and his founders had ever encountered criticism, he groaned. "Totally. It"s reverse discrimination. They say, "Why don"t you address something that scratches your own itch"" But Johnson adds, "I made it clear that I was going to hire the best people." In many cases, that hiring philosophy means actively seeking to hire women, and some male founders are making strategic choices to recruit women to join their founding teams. Of course, these male entrepreneurs make it clear that their co-founders aren"t just window dressing. In addition to their personal knowledge of the female market, women have brought valuable skills to their ventures. 4 These pink-collar male entrepreneurs aren"t letting gender hold them back. In fact, they even see some benefits of their outsider perspective. "It can be hard for entrepreneurs to not think their personal experiences are a proxy for the market," explained Topolovac. "Because I come to the table without emotional attachment to the answers, it"s made me a better listener." 5 Women are the economic engines of some of the Internet"s hottest markets from e-commerce to social media. It"s no wonder then that savvy entrepreneurs—both men and women—are developing ways to better serve the female market. And as with any growing industry, it takes teams of both genders to truly succeed. Just as we need more women to bring their unique perspective to traditionally male-dominated fields, so too will pink-collar industries benefit from smart, innovative men.
Americans are supposed to be mobile and even pushy. Saul Bellow"s Augie March declares, "I am an American... first to knock, first admitted." In "The Grapes of Wrath," young Tom Joad loads up his car with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma for California. Along the way, Grandma dies, but the Joads keep going.But sometime in the past 30 years, someone has hit the brakes and Americans—particularly young Americans—have become risk-averse and sedentary. The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today"s generation is literally going nowhere.An increasing number of teenagers are not even bothering to get their driver"s licenses. Back in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D. M. V. with new licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan"s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008—even before the Great Recession—that number had dropped to 65 percent. Though it"s easy to blame the high cost of cars or gasoline, Comerica Bank"s Automobile Affordability Index shows that it takes fewer weeks of work income to buy a car today than in the early 1980s, and inflation-adjusted gasoline prices didn"t get out of line until a few years ago.Perhaps young people are too happy at home checking Facebook. In a study of 15 countries, Michael Sivak, a professor at the University of Michigan"s Transportation Research Institute, found that when young people spent more time on the Internet, they delayed getting their driver"s licenses. "More time on Facebook probably means less time on the road," he said. That may mean safer roads, but it also means a bumpier, less vibrant economy.Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don"t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer. Research by the economist Lisa B. Kahn of the Yale School of Management shows that those who graduated from college during a poor economy experienced a relative wage loss even 15 years after entering the work force.In the mid-"70s, back when every high school kid longed for his driver"s license and a chance to hit the road and find freedom, Bruce Springsteen wrote his brilliant, exciting album "Born to Run." A generation later, as kids began to hunker down, Mr. Springsteen wrote his depressing "The Ghost of Tom Joad." We need to reward and encourage forward movement, not slouching. That may sound harsh, but do we really want to turn into a country where young Americans can"t even recognize the courage of Tom Joad Young people raised in tough economic crisis ______.
Last week 8,400 British students about to enter university received an e-mail from the Student Loans Company (SLC), a government body, reminding them to complete their application forms. It came with an attachment that listed all 8,400 e-mail addresses. The outfit later issued a sheepish apology and promised an "internal investigation". At best, such data breaches make a small dent in a firm"s reputation and the whole thing blows over, as it did SLC"s case; at worst, though, companies lose the trust of their customers and also have to pay large frees. Sony, an ailing Japanese electronics giant, may never quite recover from breach last year, when hackers stole the personal details of over 100m customers.The explosion of data in recent years was always going to make data breaches more common, as two recent reports make clear. The first is an annual publication commissioned by Symantec, a maker of security software, and carried out by the Ponemon Institute, a data-protection researcher, to look into the cost of data breaches in several countries. Now in its seventh year, the report had some good news for Americans. Calculating the costs of investigations, compensation, customer support and projected loss of revenue, it found that the average cost to a company per breached record declined for the first time since the numbers are tracked. The figure dropped from $214 in 2010 to $194 in 2011, suggesting that companies had become better both at preventing and responding to breaches.Europeans fared less well. The cost rose from ￡71 to ￡79 ($113 to $126) in Britain, from€98 to€122 ($130 to $162) in France and from€138 to€146 in privacy-conscious Germany. In all four countries, around two-thirds of all breaches were the result of technical faults and malicious attacks. But the remaining third was down to negligence. They could, in other words, never have happened.The second study goes some way to explaining why they did. Iron Mountain, a data-management company, commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, to assess the risk of information loss faced by mid-size European companies based on their attitudes to managing data. The report looks at 600 businesses in six European countries across different sectors. It found that businesses tend to regard data protection issues as the responsibility of IT departments. More than haft thought that technology can solve the problem. Only 1% of the businesses surveyed believed it concerned all employees—and thus required a change in behavior.Both reports conclude that is precisely what is needed. Symantec"s study found a correlation between having a senior executive in charge of information security and lower costs of data breaches. "It has to start at the top," says Marc Duale, Iron Mountain"s head. The best solution need not be the most expensive—employee-awareness programs and staff training can be more effective than pricey IT upgrades. Malicious attacks may be unavoidable but silly mistakes are unforgivable. From the last paragraph, we know that the best way to improve data protection performance, companies should ______.
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