Word: dial
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...mother's standards, Andrea De Cruz didn't need to lose weight. But show business imposes strict requirements on appearance, and when the dial on the Singaporean TV actress's bathroom scales spun to more than 48 kilos, De Cruz started taking a Chinese diet pill named Slim 10 that she purchased from a colleague. Two months later, De Cruz, 28, was near death, unconscious in a hospital in Singapore. Doctors at first were baffled. But they came to suspect that an ingredient in the diet drug had ravaged her liver, which had all but shut down...
...presumed to be the business's main artery to consumers. Most contemporary songs are market tested--not to determine whether consumers like them but to see if they turn the radio up or down; commercial-radio stations want their listeners to do neither, fearing that any reach for the dial could result in a station change. Inevitably, the edges come off any song that aspires to reach a mass audience. "If radio had started to play Man of Constant Sorrow"--O Brother's most accessible tune--"they would have turned it into Achy Breaky Heart. I thank them...
Fortuyn, 54, was a man for confrontation, not consensus. He wanted to re-establish Dutch border controls and let in refugees only from Britain, Denmark, France and Germany. He sought to dial back the generous disability scheme that supports the roughly 15% of Dutch workers who claim they can't work for medical reasons. At least a quarter of the state bureaucracy should be laid off, Fortuyn maintained, while at the same time the number of regional governments should be doubled and schools made smaller. A Fortuyn government would not only reintroduce the draft, but also mandate a special four...
...offer easy access to premium content such as movies and music on demand, not enough customers will pay even the $55 a month it charges today for its broadband service. Those who do--the early adopters--are actually cutting into AOL profits. Every time one of its dial-up customers shifts to broadband, the AOL service goes from a nearly 40% profit margin to one potentially as low as 10%--mainly because it has to share broadband revenue with cable partners...
...pass my hands over my computer like a magician's assistant: Look, no wires! I access a website that lets me benchmark my download speed; it clocks in at 2,920 kbps, comparable to my home cable-modem connection and 55 times as fast as the standard 56K dial-up modem. This is impressive. Heartened, I head off to my next destination: Pasadena and two free NANS (neighborhood access networks) operated by private users for the public good. I am filled with good cheer and the promise of a wireless future...