Word: alpha
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Members of the two already established Harvard sororities—Kappa Alpha Theta (Theta) and Delta Gamma (DG)—invited Kappa to “colonize” Harvard after their rush season last year met a flood of interest they did not have the space to accommodate...
Maybe it will. Maybe the rules are changing. Zandl thinks the days of the alpha consumer may be numbered. "I'm working on a theory right now that I haven't really fully fleshed out," she says cautiously. "I'm calling it 'The Center Is the New Edge.' One of the things we've been seeing is that the edge has gotten incredibly predictable--I don't think it's very fresh anymore, because it's so focused on itself." She mentions a couple of the sturdy warhorses of cool: indie actress Chloe Sevigny and edgy fashion label Imitation...
...invisible, impalpable substance that can make a particular brand of an otherwise interchangeable product--a sneaker, a pair of jeans, an action movie--fantastically valuable. And cool can be used to predict the future. The theory goes as follows: when cool people--a group known to marketers as alpha consumers--start talking or eating or dressing or shopping a certain way, noncool people (a group that most marketers belong to, by the way) will follow them. Watch the cool kids, the alpha consumers, today, and you can see what everybody else will be doing a year from...
Zandl invented the term alpha consumer, and she's the closest thing the trend business has to a founder. She's been doing it since 1986, back when we thought leg warmers were cool. She has streaky blond hair, oblong glasses and a sunny, irresistible smile. She looks like the fun, cool mom you never had. Zandl doesn't give out her exact age (fortysomething is the most she'll cop to), but she is almost certainly the oldest person in America who regularly uses "holla back" at the end of her e-mails...
...make the most of their size, carrying a full load of instruments, many of them attached to an agile mobile arm. A thermal-emission spectrometer will study background radiation for clues to rock composition; another spectrometer will look for minerals and iron; a third will emit X rays and alpha particles, which will also reveal what rocks are made of. More dramatic, a rock-abrasion tool equipped with diamond-tipped grinding wheels will gouge samples open...