text
stringlengths 7
498
| label
class label 2
classes |
|---|---|
My town is losing a car repair shop.
| 1clean
|
He had a loyal following; a friend told me he once opened early on a Sunday to fix her tire.
| 1clean
|
The garage is n’t closing for lack of customers.
| 1clean
|
“There is n’t a car from the ’70s or ’80s that we ca n’t work on,” the owner told our local weekly.
| 1clean
|
Independent repair shops are going out of business all over the country.
| 1clean
|
In California, more than half the gas stations had repair shops as recently as ten years ago.
| 1clean
|
(Have you noticed that prices are rising?)
| 1clean
|
It goes to two of the central narratives of our economy — the conventional version at least.
| 1clean
|
The word itself has become practically a synonym for “future.”
| 1clean
|
“While the Industrial Revolution herded people into gigantic social institutions — big corporations, big unions, big governments,” wrote Newt Gingrich in his book To Renew America, “the Information Revolution is breaking up these giants and leading us back to something that is — strangely enough — much more like de Tocqueville ’s 1830s America.”
| 1clean
|
For one thing, there ’s the matter of agency.
| 1clean
|
It does not have an inevitable evolutionary path.
| 1clean
|
Noble looks in particular at the machine tool industry, and how it evolved to enable top-down management control instead of autonomy on the shop floor.
| 1clean
|
Computers have followed a similar pattern.
| 1clean
|
But in practice they often do the opposite.
| 1clean
|
I do n’t really know, but it does seem reasonable.
| 1clean
|
That seems to be what ’s happening.
| 1clean
|
Car repair used to be a knowledge commons, shared in driveways, urban curbsides, and voc. ed. classes.
| 1clean
|
There was little if any secret and proprietary code.
| 1clean
|
I am not suggesting that we all go back to bamboo huts, though a few weeks might not be the worst thing now and then.
| 1clean
|
I am just questioning the techno-romantics who think technology by its very nature is enlarging and fulfilling.
| 1clean
|
Sometimes it does the opposite, and hollows us out.
| 1clean
|
Adam Smith actually had a glimmer of this, regarding the effect of the division of labor upon the workers involved.
| 1clean
|
As each task becomes more specialized, Smith noted, it engages less of the person.
| 1clean
|
Narrow work leads to human atrophy; it can make people “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”
| 1clean
|
(Smith had a brooding cautionary side that is lacking among his acolytes today.)
| 1clean
|
It affects people not just as employees but as “consumers” even more (and consumption is the real work of our “economy” to begin with.)
| 1clean
|
There ’s a built-in social dimension that engages us at more levels, as producers as well as just consumers.
| 1clean
|
Open systems evolve to serve the needs of users rather than of those who seek to use the users for their own ends.
| 1clean
|
I was wearing a yellow linen dress which my mother had picked out and which I therefore disliked although I knew it flattered me.
| 1clean
|
My father and I were going to mass — my mother did not go; she was Protestant.
| 1clean
|
When I was a little girl, he did that often, and called me Muscles.
| 1clean
|
He had not called me Muscles or put his hand on my head for a long time.
| 1clean
|
I wanted to feel the rough edge of the pocket of his coat against my cheek, but I was too tall.
| 1clean
|
I wanted to be seven again, and safe.
| 1clean
|
But I still wanted to push against his hand and put my hand in his pocket and steal the leather palmed glove, that secret animal.
| 1clean
|
Instead I went into the church, took a Bulletin, dipped my finger in Holy Water and genuflected.
| 1clean
|
The inside of the church smelled like damp wood and furniture polish, not alive at all.
| 1clean
|
My father took off his coat and draped it over the edge of the pew and when I came back from communion I stole his glove.
| 1clean
|
It smelled like March.
| 1clean
|
We walked back through the school because it was drizzling, my father tall in his navy suit and my shoes going click on the linoleum.
| 1clean
|
There were two classes of each grade, starting at the sixth and going down to the first.
| 1clean
|
The hall ended in a T and we went left through the gym, walked underneath the bleachers and stood next to the side door, waiting for the rain to stop.
| 1clean
|
He stood rocked back on his heels with his coat thrown over his shoulders and his hands in his pockets.
| 1clean
|
I thought of bacon and eggs, toast with peach jam out of the jar.
| 1clean
|
There were things in the shadows; a metal pail, a mop, rags.
| 1clean
|
There was no holder and the end was jagged.
| 1clean
|
The light from the door made the shadows under the bleachers darker, the long space stretched far away.
| 1clean
|
I heard the rain and the faint rustle of paper and smelled damp concrete.
| 1clean
|
I did not go near my father but kept my hand in my pocket, feeling the soft leather glove.
| 1clean
|
There was a rustling on the concrete and the drizzle of soft rain.
| 1clean
|
I wondered if anyone ever went back under the bleachers, if there were crickets or mice there.
| 1clean
|
I wished the rain would stop.
| 1clean
|
I wanted to go home.
| 1clean
|
I made noises with my heels but they were too loud so I stopped.
| 1clean
|
Something else clicked and I tried to see what it was but could n’t see anything.
| 1clean
|
My father cleared his throat, looking out the door.
| 1clean
|
I imagined a man down there in the dark, an escaped convict or a madman.
| 1clean
|
I heard a noise like paper.
| 1clean
|
My father heard it, too, but he pretended not to, at least he did n’t turn his head.
| 1clean
|
And there was a heavier sound, a rasp, like a box pulled over concrete.
| 1clean
|
I looked at my father but he did n’t turn his head.
| 1clean
|
I wished he would turn his head.
| 1clean
|
There was a click again and the rustle, and I could not think of what it could be.
| 1clean
|
I had no explanation for the particular combination of sounds.
| 1clean
|
Once in a fever I heard thousands of birds outside my window and I was terrified that they would fling themselves through the glass and attack me, but it was only the rain on the eaves.
| 1clean
|
He dwelt in another world, a world of intrigue, bargains, contracts and clandestine purchases of land all over the island.
| 1clean
|
The day began as it usually did when my father was expected home from his travels, the house festooned with flowers and stocked with coconut liquor.
| 1clean
|
We stood by the gate, washed and perfumed and arrayed in our brightest clothes, my mother twisting her hands in her skirt, my father ’s wife with red eyes.
| 1clean
|
Jom, grown taller and broad in the shoulders, moaned gently to himself, while I stood nervously rubbing the heel of one sandal on the flagstones.
| 1clean
|
We scanned the deep blue valley for the first sign of the company, but before we saw them we heard the children shouting: “A yellow man!”
| 1clean
|
We glanced at one another in confusion.
| 1clean
|
My mother bit her lower lip; Jom gave a groan of alarm.
| 1clean
|
At first I thought the children meant my father, whose golden skin, the color of the night-monkey ’s pelt, was a rarity in the islands; but certainly the children of Tyom were familiar with my father, and would never have greeted a council-member with such ill-mannered yells.
| 1clean
|
Then I remembered the only “yellow man” I had ever seen, an Olondrian wizard and doctor who had visited Tyom in my childhood, who wore two pieces of glass on his eyes, attached to his ears with wires, and roamed the hills of Tinimavet, cutting bits off the trees.
| 1clean
|
I have since learned that that doctor wrote a well-received treatise, On the Medicinal Properties of the Juice of the Young Coconut, and died a respected man in his native city of Deinivel; but at the time I felt certain he had returned with his sack of tree-cuttings.
| 1clean
|
“There they are,” said Pavit, the head house-servant, in a strained voice.
| 1clean
|
My father ’s plaited umbrella appeared, his still, imposing figure, and beside him another man, tall and lean, astride an island mule.
| 1clean
|
The hectic screams of the children preceded the company into the village, so that they advanced like a festival, drawing people out of their houses.
| 1clean
|
As they approached I saw that my father ’s face was shining with pride, and his bearing had in it a new hauteur, like that of the old island kings.
| 1clean
|
The man who rode beside him, looking uncomfortable with his long legs, kept his gaze lowered and fixed between the ears of his plodding mule.
| 1clean
|
As he dismounted in front of the house I heard my mother whispering: “Protect us, God with the Black-and-White Tail, from that which is not of this earth.”
| 1clean
|
My father dismounted from his mule and strutted toward us, grinning.
| 1clean
|
I thought I caught an odor off him, of fish, sea-sickness and sweat.
| 1clean
|
We knelt and stared down at the bald ground, murmuring ritual greetings, until he touched the tops of our heads with the palm of his fleshy hand.
| 1clean
|
Then we stood, unable to keep from staring at the stranger, who faced us awkwardly, half-smiling, taller than any man there.
| 1clean
|
Wikinews interviews meteorological experts on Cyclone Phalin
| 1clean
|
Cyclone Phailin has winds that have been measured at 200 km / h, as it surges over land will it begin to lose strength?
| 1clean
|
As of the last advisory, T C Phailin has winds of 190 kilometers per hour and has moved inland, headed on a northwest track.
| 1clean
|
This occurs for two reasons:
| 1clean
|
Cyclones gather their strength through scraping moisture and heat from warm ocean water that it is not the case over land.
| 1clean
|
In the mean time, much stronger friction over land quickly reduces their strength.
| 1clean
|
All tropical cyclones lose strength once they make landfall.
| 1clean
|
A previous cyclone in 1999 in the Bay of Bengal area of India left 10,000 people dead.
| 1clean
|
I have not followed that aspect of the societal response for the present storm.
| 1clean
|
However, historically, there have been several events that should cause a societal response.
| 1clean
|
Hopefully, we all learn from past mistakes.
| 1clean
|
I don't have enough information to answer this question, one way or the other.
| 1clean
|
From all the press reports that I have read, the Indian government appears to have taken the threat of Cyclone Phailin very seriously indeed.
| 1clean
|
The government has been much more pro-active in preparing for this cyclone than in the past.
| 1clean
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.