The legal theory is complicated by the fact, as Judge Woodcock noted, that both types of cigarettes cost the same.

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What sounds straightforward in theory is complicated in practice.

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Unlike some of the more complicated efforts to devise a theory of everything, this one should either succeed relatively rapidly or fail spectacularly.

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The supposed merits of buy-backs are complicated by what looks like a conflict between theory and practice.

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Because these convoluted, complicated approaches are the result of faulty economic theory, which posits that a currency's value is directly tied to a government's fiscal policies.

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"What looks good in theory is, in fact, pretty complicated to pull off in practice, " says Niel Golightly, a vice president for Ford of Europe.

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Unfortunately, reality is a bit more complicated, and on closer examination, the details void the whole theory.

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Although the theory that describes the interaction of quarks and gluons is on a firm conceptual footing, it is so complicated in practice that it can take years to make a single calculation of something like the shape of a proton even using the most powerful supercomputers.

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