Word: illicitness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...free” downloads is their tacit promises of protection. Take the RealPlayer shareware, a media streaming program so offensively retrograde that a million monkeys with a million keyboards with a million 1’s and 0’s could never devise it. During one illicit encounter with the RealPlayer.exe file brought on by a misbegotten attempt to watch “Bootylicious: In concert,” I responsibly unchecked all the boxes that would have signed me up for daily newsletters, news updates, update letters, dating news, upletter dates, and finally, that salacious e-menage...
...reality, the government's efforts are little more than black smoke and trick mirrors. Although local cadres have dutifully reported illegal-mine closures, many are secretly being kept open. In desolate places like Guizhou, there is no other way to make money. (Many provincial officials are shareholders in illicit, privately owned mines.) In other areas the ban has been unevenly enforced, creating a deadly problem: as some mine shafts are blocked by government inspectors, those still in operation receive less ventilation, increasing the chances of a gas explosion. Despite Beijing's highly publicized campaign, 3,200 miners have died...
Political unrest fuels the trade. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, as in Somalia, years of fighting have left many of the country's museums nearly empty. "For starving, unpaid soldiers, anything is good for sale," says George Abungu, chairman of the International Standing Committee on the Traffic in Illicit Antiquities. "Lack of order is a perfect breeding ground for people who want to collect...
...African museum, where an exhibit may be dusty, unlabeled and all but forgotten. Moreover, the antiquities are safe. Frank Willett, a leading authority on Nigerian antiquities, has advised that disputed items in Western museums not be returned to Nigeria unless they can be properly protected. He compares the illicit-art trade to the drug trade. "The stimulus for all this, of course, comes from the West," he says. "If collectors and museums were not interested in acquiring these pieces, there wouldn't be an illicit trade in them...
...miniskirted cigarette and beer girls. The narrow space between the sidewalk seating and lines of inching taxis in the street throngs with people, mostly Chinese, who have come to check out the foreigners at play. Drinks are pricey, music is loud and there is more than a hint of illicit sex in the air. But something a little smoother is just around the corner...