Word: audition
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...addictively mean Fametracker www.fametracker.com)--"The Farmer's Almanac of Celebrity Worth"--is dedicated to exposing the overexposed and meting out punishment for hubris. Its signature feature, the "Fame Audit," dissects superstars' careers and publicity binges with surgical detail. On Ben Affleck: "[He] has had a Counting Crows kind of career--too much, too fast, too soon. This isn't his fault, but it is his problem." Each audit tots the star's assets and liabilities (Affleck's: "Easygoing, cocksure charm"/"Consistently refers to his acting as 'the work'") and judges the celeb's "actual" and "deserved" level of fame...
...Fametracker disses the famous, they stay dissed. Yet its nastiness is informed by a genuine love of show biz. "If we thought everything was crap," says editor Tara Ariano, "we wouldn't go see four movies a week." Fametracker simply wants justice: "Do you know," says Giancarlo Esposito's audit, "how many underappreciated, underrecognized and underutilized actors--like Giancarlo Esposito--could be made famous simply by stripping Whoopi Goldberg of her fame and dispensing it to the deserving?" Preach...
Then tales of financial abuse began to roll in. A state audit found a clerk in the department of children's services had been taking kickbacks to allow ineligible kids into a state-financed day-care program for abused and neglected children. Other audits found four centers that had misused thousands of dollars in state funds and another that had received federal dollars for 8,184 breakfasts and 5,208 snacks that children never received. (One center is appealing its audit.) Investigations by the Memphis Commercial Appeal found still other day-care centers paying their executives six figures while paying...
Each retrofit starts with an audit. Teachers and pupils are taught to measure how much energy and water are consumed at their school and how much solid waste is produced. Through classroom guides and training sessions, Destination Conservation staff members then identify behavioral changes that kids and teachers can make--turning off lights after use, recycling cafeteria plates--to cut waste. The kids monitor the effects; typically, utility bills fall...
...Environmentalists have criticized the bank for funding large development projects that have had a negative impact on the environment. The bank has attempted to answer these too, instituting an "environmental audit" of all of its programs in recent years...