Word: customizer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Already a folk hero, Reyes became a legend at the 1999 World Championships in Cardiff, Wales. As is his custom, he showered before the tournament and not again until it was over?"so the luck won't wash off," he says?then beat players from England, Germany, Japan, fellow Filipino Francisco ("Django") Bustamante and, in the finals, Taiwan's Hao Ping-chang. Filipinos knew he was good, even great. But now he was world champion, and he was theirs...
...There's another twist. Although she's been billed on other releases outside Japan as "Utada Hikaru," the credits on Blow My Whistle bill her as "Hikaru Utada"?using the Western custom of listing the surname last. Says Hikaru: "I just figured it's a good way to separate my English and Japanese personae." After the interview, she sends a follow-up e-mail that begins, "This is Hikaru Utada. (Or is it Utada Hikaru ... oh, whichever!)" She is still a freshman. She'll work things...
That left me with two popular older models: KitchenAid's $100 Ultra Power Plus, which comes in fun colors like green, blue and red, and Cuisinart's Custom Control Total Touch, which typically sells for $70. The KitchenAid was cute and compact, but I finally settled on the slightly bulkier Cuisinart because it consistently turned out the most evenly browned bread, bagels, Pop-Tarts and muffins with the least amount of thought or effort on my part. Now that's what I call a smart toaster--not that I'll ever get near a piece of toast again...
...attitudes toward FGM are slowly changing. In a quiet revolution, African women are beginning to speak out against the practice. Media campaigns linking such rituals to difficulties in pregnancy and AIDS have slowed the custom, especially in urban areas. The growing number of educated women has helped too. In the countryside, success is coming not by abolishing coming-of-age rites altogether but by recognizing their importance and replacing the cutting with alternative rituals. "In some tribes you cannot become a mature woman unless you have come through the ritual," says Kittony, whose group has used alternative rites to reduce...
Elsewhere, elders continue to encourage circumcisions because the custom provides an important social and economic role. Families in the Sabaot tribe in Kenya, for instance, receive cows upon the circumcision of their first girl. And alternative ceremonies can cause problems of their own. Julie Maranya, coordinator of a Kenyan anti-fgm group, says that because young girls are being taught sex education as part of their alternative initiation, "they think they are now free to engage in pre-marital sex. That's why we have made many tiny mothers...