He lives in a cozy little house.

An open, industrial loft in DTLA gets a cozy makeover

Now we have to reach beyond the cozy circle of our Western friends.

The Turks, they think, will fatalistically accept any snub. But this cozy assumption overlooks a tectonic shift in Turkey s geo political position.

To many, Thai Myanmar relations are too cozy. Critics accuse Thaksin of conflicts of interest, as his family owned telecommunications conglomerate holds sizeable investments in Myanmar.

And so does your bleep . These days, with a hair free back, well groomed shoulders and an extra optical inch on my bleep , well, let's just say life has gotten pretty darn cozy.

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, attacked the cozy consensus around fiscal consolidation in Westminster. The deficit, she rightly said, was a symptom of economic difficulties, not just the cause of them.

But this is best addressed in Copenhagen, in the presence of all world leaders, not in the cozy confines of the G 20. Small countries think of Mauritius are often the ones affected most dramatically by global warming.

And we will see increasingly that even we in the West will reach out, have to reach out, beyond the cozy circle of the Atlantic powers to make alliances with others if we want to get things done in the world.

In particular, the stubborn Dutchman understood the extreme danger if Europe s top monetary authority became too cozy with Europe s politicians, especially at a time when many EU finance ministers view economic reform and excess liquidity as being essentially the same thing.

One after the other, most European countries have reformed their economies, shedding the cozy arrangements that used to protect every interest group from the pressure of competition. Even Germany, after even worse performance than France, has now taken decisive steps.

By maintaining cozy relations with repressive regimes and protecting them from international sanctions, China risks being seen as their accomplice. Even when China s voice could be decisive in resolving crises or preventing bloodshed, instead of acting, its diplomats repeat the old platitudes about non interference.

This is precisely the point. The biggest resentment among right wing voters in European countries is reserved for political elites, who, in the opinion of many, have been governing for too long in cozy coalitions, which appear to exist chiefly to protect vested interests.

Europe now gets 1 of its energy from wind less than before industrialization, when cozy windmills contributed about 2 (and ships sails provided another 1 ). The UK set its record for wind power in 1804, when its share reached 2.5 almost three times its level today.

At the same time, there is a double agency problem, as the ultimate shareholders individual shareholders don t directly control boards and CEOs. These shareholders are represented by institutional investors (pension funds, etc.) whose interests, agendas, and cozy relationships often align them more closely with firms CEOs and managers.

Sumo evolved over many centuries as a peripatetic form of public entertainment in which the wrestlers, trainers, and promoters depended on local gangs to secure facilities and an audience, including selling the tickets. This cozy relationship was supposedly dissolved when the traditional Sumo circle was modernized, becoming today s JSA.

I'm not saying that fiction has the magnitude of an earthquake, but when we are reading a good novel, we leave our small, cozy apartments behind, go out into the night alone and start getting to know people we had never met before and perhaps had even been biased against.

In fact, Europe s much vaunted social model is more a dream than a reality, the dream of a cozy world in which a benevolent state looks after us. This world has ceased to be viable in large part for reasons of demography, as ever more claimants for assistance make costs unaffordable.

Beginning with a gin and tonic just after noon, and ending with a Napoleon brandy at three o clock, lunch prior to the Big Bang was often the most arduous part of a stockbroker s day. That cozy culture ended soon after the thrusting, brash Americans, who worked even over breakfast, hit town.

And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs. Using one candle for each switched off bulb cancels out even the theoretical CO2 reduction using two candles means that you emit more CO2.

To be sure, large swaths of Venezuelan society rightly felt excluded from the country s cozy elite consensus and insular governing arrangements, and resented it immensely but an aspiring middle class comprised roughly half the population. Chávez exploited and widened that division indeed, as the current campaign to elect his successor shows, the country remains more polarized than ever.

By treating Lukashenka as a favored business partner at the same time that the EU is trying to isolate him as an international pariah, European hypocrisy stands naked. Instead of indirectly propping up Lukashenka s regime through such cozy deals, Europe s governments must begin to act in accordance with what Europe s parliament has long understood underwriting Lukashenka economically only prolongs his misrule.

If the public expresses contempt and revulsion for bankers who cheat their clients, oil executives who wreck the climate, FIFA officials who countenance kickbacks, and politicians who cozy up to all of them in exchange for campaign funds and bribes, illegality for the few cannot become the norm. Public scorn might not end corruption immediately, but it can make life far less pleasant for those who are stealing the commons from the rest of us.

This cozy relationship created a moral hazard in Pakistan, as the generous flow of US aid insulated the government and military from any sense of urgency about economic reform some foreign friend would always rescue the country from its perennial shortage of cash. So far, that friend has been America, but the US could well pull out of Pakistan for the fourth time in the countries turbulent relationship a threat that several influential figures in the US Congress have already made.