Word: phoning
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Vanderboegh says he is not a racist, and he has taken pains to distance himself from neo-Nazis. He acknowledges that anti-immigrant sentiment is giving the Klan "fertile ground for recruiting," whereas a few years ago "they could have held a convention in a phone booth." "Illegal immigration and the destruction of the rule of law is social napalm, and people are running around with matches," he warns. "One day it will...
...That's not how it works now. In the cities of Australia, a typical scenario sees a group of teenage boys approach a group of girls at the beach. After some desultory conversation, the boys suggest an exchange of mobile-phone numbers. It's rare for a girl to say no, even if she doesn't like a guy. Better to give a fake number than make a scene. "I just kind of give it to anybody. I don't really think about it," says 15-year-old Kathleen. The boy's first text message might arrive the same night...
...world's first text message was sent in 1993, no one foresaw that in just over a decade, the laborious act of texting would become a principal means of communication between teens, or that it would transform the rules and rituals of adolescent courtship. Unlike talking on the phone, texting provides an emotional screen that hides shyness and awkwardness; it also buys time for the less acute to compose seemingly effortless repartee. "It's emboldened teenagers," says Australian Research Council fellow Gerard Goggin, who's just finished a book about the cultural impact of mobile phones...
...covert means of flirtation and erotic communication, texting is rocket fuel for teen romance. Its consequences have outpaced local academic inquiry, though a recent study at the University of Oslo, in Norway, found a link between teenagers' mobile-phone activity and the timing of their first sexual experience. Says one 15-year-old boy, who identified himself as "Tank" when Time found him texting at a Sydney railway station: "If you're not sending 10 texts a day-minimum-you're not in the game...
...three years since then, some things in Congo have improved. Mining firms have returned, and cell-phone companies--particularly welcome in a country that has just a few thousand fixed lines serving more than 60 million people--are doing a booming business. But in some parts of the country, the fighting has never really stopped. The U.N.'s peacekeeping force has got tougher in the past year, chasing rebels and apprehending or even killing them, but the force lacks the numbers to impose complete order. Congolese troops who are supposed to be helping the U.N. peacekeepers have proved ineffective...