"The whole idea of status and conspicuous consumption is old luxury, " Danziger explains.

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Although Apple brags about its leading status for public consumption (which is good for the brand), it remains wary of overconfidence internally.

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Concentrating on volume, while maintaining quality, the vodka is looking to subvert a long-standing equation of consumption as a marker of social status, as was eloquently explained by Pierre Bourdieau in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment Of Taste.

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Although the researchers took into account a wide range of extenuating factors, including diet and exercise regimens, smoking, alcohol consumption, body mass index, and marital status, it's possible that people who drink coffee differ from the rest of the population in as-yet unidentified ways that make them less vulnerable to disease and early death.

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For many conservationists, the near-extinction of numerous whale populations in the seventies, and their continued threatened status today, is emblematic of a much more severe problem: the wholesale harvesting, whether for human consumption or for industry, of too many living things from the sea.

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