As a result, much of Asia's plentiful high-tech money is sitting idle for lack of talent.
That essentially means that one-third of the world's chip factories, or "fabs, " were sitting idle.
And that left millions of skilled, hardworking Americans sitting idle, just like the plants were sitting idle.
The incident passed largely unnoticed because the third reactor had only recently returned to service after years of sitting idle.
Come tell Dallas construction workers why they should be sitting idle instead of out there on the job.
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The Club Med countries have an endless supply of prime assets sitting idle, virtually all of which could be rented out in short order.
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In Maine, Freeport Ski and Bike shop co-owner Jamie Richardson saw a lot of people get skis tuned that looked like they'd been sitting idle for a while.
But it seems obvious that it is better for the economy if a 60-year-old does a productive job than if he is sitting idle, supported by the taxpayer.
Nearly 5m people in 226 countries have downloaded a screensaver that makes their computer available, whenever it is sitting idle, to process radio signals gathered from outer space.
"We have revenue-generating units sitting idle that could be dispatched, and we're not aware of that now, " says Paul Mueller, vice president in charge of communications technology at Schneider.
One night a few years ago, after the staff had left, she surveyed the company's design center in East Hartford, Conn. and counted hundreds of powerful Unix workstations sitting idle but ready.
Wing-Kovarik has had his two boys, Chris and Shawn, since 2002, and he can't imagine sitting idle while there are so many other foster children who are still stuck in the system.
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It is rather as though a household with lots of cash sitting idle in a low-interest bank account was at the same time paying a much higher interest rate on its debts.
And over the last decade, the manufacturing workforce shrank by 33 percent, leaving millions of skilled, hardworking Americans sitting as idle as the plants that they once worked in.
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"Right now, your car is idle, just sitting, parked about 96 percent of the time, " explains Amory Lovins.
If you want further evidence, these critics would say, look at the balance sheets of Britain's biggest companies, many of whom are sitting on a mountain of idle cash.
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