Word: rife
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Military coups used to be messy affairs, rife with panic and barricades and bloodshed. After the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Pakistan last week, there was cheering. In the span of 48 hours, army chief General Pervez Musharraf detained Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, sacked the Cabinet, suspended Parliament and the constitution, and imposed virtual martial law. Yet most Pakistanis barely shrugged. Shops remained open. Telephone service was restored. Children went to school. In Sharif's hometown of Lahore, people danced in the streets and distributed candies to celebrate the coup. "We don't want democracy," said Mohammed Tariq...
None of this is new; recent history is rife with bloody battles waged over governmental standard-setting in the realm of publicly funded art. Staid Cincinnati erupted over Robert Mapplethorpe?s photographs of nude men and children. Then there was Andres Serrano (a graduate, incidentally, of the Brooklyn Museum art school) and his "Piss Christ." And who could forget the chocolate-smeared Karen Finley? The terms of the debate are familiar: Does government funding place ultimate discretionary power in the hands of public officials, or does the First Amendment guarantee freedom of expression for all artists, in all venues? Proponents...
...well that they're usually more hassle than they're worth. So when I heard about all the new free-PC offers, I couldn't help wincing. Companies like Gobi, Intersquid and ePCdirect require you to pay up to $30 a month for Net access and are rife with hidden fees for basics like a monitor, tech support and one-time "start-up" charges. And then there's the nagging fear that these newcomers will vanish into cyberspace long before your three-year contract is up. Would you really want to do business with a company called Enchilada? Actually...
...precious capital must be allocated to marketing and sales rather than rent and salaries, which contribute only to the burn rate--the monthly running expenses of an Internet company ticking toward ipo or implosion. For new-media employees, the workday is 16 hours, the workweek seven days. "Cyberspace is rife with sweatshops," says Andrew Ross, director of the American Studies program at New York University. "The problem is, very few people realize it. The glamour of the technology industry carries a powerful mystique...
Although the ballet is rife with the elaborate costumes, sets and special effects we have come to expect with Disneyesque productions, the inherent integrity of the dancing, Liszt's music and the gothic tale itself do not let the ballet become a sticky-sweet morality tale in the style of Beauty and the Beast. It is an odd mixture, to be sure--appealing more to those accustomed to home-videos of rhythmically-inclined crustaceans than those with box seats already lined up for next year's Firebird. And while Dracula proves to be an exciting show, it is just that...