Word: height
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Albert Einstein stood common sense on its head when he proclaimed time to be just another dimension, like height, width and depth, and went on to declare that it can be stretched and warped like taffy. But that notion is much too mundane for Julian Barbour. According to the 64-year-old British physicist, there's no point in trying to describe time, because it simply doesn't exist. "The passage of time," he says, "is simply an illusion created by our brains...
...profitable procedure for cosmetic purposes has mushroomed. Many clinics have year-long waiting lists. The surgery's popularity is abetted by requirements that exclude short citizens from dozens of fields, from flight attendants to government translators. In a country that has hundreds of qualified applicants for every job, height minimums are one way to whittle down the competition. "You don't have to be tall to be good at computers," says Ma Xiang, a recruiter for a consortium of online companies in Beijing, which requires that female applicants be at least 1.6 m tall (the average height of Chinese women...
...Still determined, Xiaowei visited a Shanghai surgeon who promised the seemingly impossible: to add 7 cm to her height. The leg surgery would be simple, he said, if brutal. He would saw her shin bones, affix metal braces with 16 steel needles to her legs, then slowly stretch the newly forming bone tissue into a longer pair of gams. A steep $11,000 later, Xiaowei found herself in a spartan Shanghai hospital room surveying her scarred but elongated legs. Four months in the dingy ward have left her stir-crazy, but Xiaowei shows off limbs already stretched...
...surgery doesn't always ensure mental well-being. Zhang Wen found she was 4 cm shy of the 1.6-m height requirement for Air China stewardesses. Last year, a surgeon in the central city of Chongqing promised to solve her dilemma for $3,000. After four months' hospitalization and nearly a year of rehab, one of Zhang's legs is 3 cm shorter than the other, causing her to limp. Having spent her savings on the botched operation, Zhang can't afford more surgery. Such malpractice is common in China's booming south, where fly-by-night surgeons take advantage...
Junior high jumper Kart Siilats, the defending NCAA indoor champion, took the first step towards defending her title by leaping 1.81 meters to make an NCAA provisional qualifying height for the first time this season...