Wholly aside from aesthetic and moral considerations, fashion is an

economic absurdity, and there is little to be said in its favor.

Nevertheless, we can appreciate the wisdom in Gina Lombrero’s belief 【M1】_________

the enormous stress which women lay on everything pertaining with 【M2】_________

clothes and the art of personal adornment is connected with the

tendency to crystallize sentiment into an object. A woman symbolizes

every important event in her life by a special dress; and a jewel or a

beautiful gown means to a woman that an official decoration means to a 【M3】_________

man.

The temptation of dress is the last step in the ceremony to the 【M4】_________

novice has to submit before entering the cloister. The memory of the

gown which she might have worn was the strongest temptation that assailed

St. Catherine before she took her solemn vows—a gown, embroidering 【M5】_________

with gold and stars,like that her sisters had worn, which her 【M6】_________

grandchildren would have gazed with eyes filled with wonder and 【M7】_________

admiration…

It a woman’s clothes cost the family and society a little time, money

and activity, they allow woman, independent in lies and calumnies, to 【M8】_________

triumph and come to the fore outside of man’s world and competition.

They allow woman to satisfy with her desire to be the first in the most 【M9】_________

varied fields by giving her the illusion that she is the first, and at the

same time enable her rival to have the same illusion. Clothes absorb 【M10】________

some of woman’s activity which might otherwise be diverted to more or

less worth-while ends; they give woman real satisfaction.

It never rains but it pours. Just as bosses and boards have finally

sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved

their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn

it—especially in America—the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably 【M1】_________

lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity. Leave, until 【M2】_________

now, to odd, low-level IT staff to put right, and seen as a concern only

of data-rich industries such as banking, telecoms and air travel, information

protection is now high on the boss’s agenda in businesses with every 【M3】_________

variety.

Several massive leakages of customer and employer data this year— 【M4】_________

from organizations as diverse as Time Warner, the American defense

contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the

University of California, Berkeley—have left managers hurriedly peer 【M5】_________

into their intricate IT systems and business processes in the search of 【M6】_________

potential vulnerabilities.

“Data is becoming an asset which needs to be guarded as many as 【M7】_________

any other asset,” says Haim Mendelson of Stanford University’s business

school. “The ability to guard customer data is the key to market value,

what the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders.” Indeed, 【M8】_________

just like there is the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting 【M9】_________

Principles (GAAP), perhaps it is time for GASP, Generally Accepted

Security Practices, suggested Eli Noam of New York’s Columbia

Business School. “Setting up the proper investment level for security, 【M10】_________

redundancy and recovery is a management issue, not a technical one,”

he says.

A project likely to evolve in the near or intermediate future is space

tourism. Today space tourism has become a pure commercial activity 【M1】________

that would not have to rely unpredictable government decisions. It would 【M2】________

therefore put space operations on a much more solid, dependable footing

and would enormously expand man’s space activity. If some people see 【M3】________

space tourism as a potential multibillion-dollar business, difficult

technical problems remain to be solved.

First, in order to fulfill the dream of space tourism, a manned

reusable rocket like the Venture Star must be built. Then, the second 【M4】________

serious problem must be addressed: Even today’s most-advanced space

rockets are able to lift only about 2. 5% of their launch weight into

orbit—a ratio that has hardly changed in the last 40 years. But it is 【M5】_________

simply impossible to find other alternations other than a rocket. This 【M6】_________

unsatisfying fact is a result of the limits of material characteristics and

chemical power sources, and there is no indication which any 【M7】_________

fundamental breakthrough can be expected in these areas in the

foreseeable future. Then these who have long-cherished dreams of space 【M8】_________

tourism have to wait forever.

Operational costs may be somewhat reduced by the use of air-

breathing engines to help a reusable rocket penetrate into the earth’s

atmosphere. Today the highest cost attainable to lift a payload into orbit 【M9】_________

is more than $ 4,000 per pound; the price of a ticket to space would

have to be at least $ 50,000. It is questionable whether a sufficient

number of customers could be tempted to pay so a high price for a short 【M10】________

trip around the world.