The evolution of Australian eating from pie floaters, lager and steaks to internationally acclaimed wines and a wide range of restaurants, principally in the Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney triangle, has been swift, though not entirely painless.
Banks that used to provide basic mortgages now sell fixed loans and floaters, caps, collars, locks and other financial exotica to befuddled home-buyers.
But, as pollsters also attest, they would probably have voted Labour anyway: they are not the suburban floaters who decide the outcome of British general elections.
Moreover, inward investment remains small (Libya got more last year), largely because of red tape and officials wanting bribes.Pollsters say about 20% of Greek voters are floaters who make up their minds only a few weeks before polling day.
Devices known as "floaters" are already used to support more than two-thirds of the 4,000 or so oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, says Paul Sclavounos, a marine engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Building turbines on land can be just as controversial, suitable locations for fixed-base shallow-water turbines are limited and a new generation of big turbines will need lots of space: only a couple can be placed in each square kilometre.SWAY, a company based in Bergen, Norway, is developing turbine floaters that can operate in 150 metres of water.
The emerging-market countries are right to be reluctant floaters, he says, because the foreign-exchange markets have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to drive currencies into serious medium- and longer-term misalignment, with severe consequences for growth.
I believe that at some point later this century, there will be consolidation, ending perhaps in two or three core currencies, with a scattered periphery of floaters.
These symptoms include the onset of many "floaters" (deposits in the eye that cause visual spots or shadows), as well as brief, flashing lights in the affected eye.
The appearance of many floaters, however, may be associated with inflammation, bleeding in the eye, or a retinal tear and should be evaluated urgently.
(The United Kingdom strongly advocated free trade.) The Democrats in turn published a letter from the Republican National Committee that exhorted the use of "floaters," or paid nonresident voters, in Indiana; the Republicans decried it as a fraud.
