He'd be squeezed against scores of other swine, hoofing a steel grate floor, while growing fatter and fatter on a factory farm.

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But the upper floors also have clear potential to attract Brooklyn's growing technology sector with huge floor plates and views on four sides of Manhattan, Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn.

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One Friday afternoon, I drove to an industrial park on the outskirts of Boston, where a rapidly growing data-analysis company called Verisk Health occupies a floor of a nondescript office complex.

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The bathroom installation featured a "wet room" -- a growing trend in bathroom design -- that incorporates an open floor plan.

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But in an economy growing by 15% a year (in nominal terms), that floor is unlikely to deter borrowers.

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Seventy years ago, Winston Churchill repeatedly took to the floor of the House of Commons to warn his nation against the growing menace posed by the steady accretion of military might by Nazi Germany.

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"We don't have our heads stuck in the sand", Mr Cook said, in reference to the growing competition from Google's Android smartphones, as he took a half-dozen questions from the floor and answered those submitted remotely to his iPad mini.

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