Word: aka
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Only once every year or two does a debut album hit the streets fully-formed, charting a new direction from its predecessors. Even more rarely is the inventiveness maintained for more than a few standout tracks. What a blessing then is cocky Englishman Mike Skinner, aka The Streets, and his debut album Original Pirate Material. Blending elements of rap, spoken word, two-step garage and enough attitude to start a personal clothing line, Original Pirate Material is exactly the sort of album we’ve learned not to expect...
...Whether the product being sold is beer, cars or Italian parliamentary candidates, skin sells. Just ask the betel-nut girls of Taipei. For years, scantily clad women have been used as fleshy sign-boards to attract customers to roadside stalls selling betel nuts, aka "Taiwanese chewing gum," from shops with names like "Erotic Bitches" and "Moulin Rouge." But on October 15, the county government, embarrassed by the display of public erotica, began enforcing laws prohibiting 1,600 hawkers from unduly exposing certain parts of the female anatomy, specifically breasts, bellies and buttocks. Vendors, of course, claim the restrictions will shrink...
...American government. "There have been ominous signs," he writes, "that our fragile liberties have been dramatically at risk since the 1970s when the white-shirt-blue-suit-discreet-tie FBI reinvented itself from a corps of 'generalists,' trained in law and accounting, into a confrontational 'Special Weapons and Tactics' (aka SWAT) Green Beret-style army of warriors who like to dress up in camouflage or black ninja clothing and, depending on the caper, ski masks." Note the penultimate noun in that sentence: in Vidal's account, it's those who job it is to fight crime who are the criminals...
...dipped his fingers in several pies, but none of his initiatives—with the possible, amusing and more than slightly irritating exception of Springfest 2002 (aka Sketchifest), a comparatively small no-longer-student-centered project with few real long-term benefits—have really come to fruition yet. Following the departure of Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74, this leaves Summers in an unenviable public relations position: with his predecessor’s acclaimed Afro-American studies department in flux, several unfortunately well-publicized interpersonal gaffes, and the student body’s affections...
...Bill Frist, aka Dr. Frist, has written a guide to coping with bioterrorism, entitled "When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism from the Senate's Only Doctor" (Rowman & Littlefield). Curiously, the one-page ad in this week's PW neglects to say when the book, which is blurbed by everyone from Sen. Edward Kennedy to Bono, is actually coming out. Also, there is no indication whether or not the proceeds are being given to charity. But diet doc Dean Ornish sure likes it: "If you buy only one book this year, this should...