Word: todays
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...antiques dealers, who would seem most threatened by eBay, have seen their livelihoods transformed. David James, for example, opened his shop in Alexandria, Va., eight years ago. He deals mostly in what the trade calls smalls: candlesticks, glassware and other such collectibles. He's still got the store, but today his business--and his life--revolve around a warehouse a few miles away, where he stores the treasures he has gleaned from scouting estate sales and flea markets. From a cramped, windowless cubicle, he monitors the hundreds of auctions he has posted--moving anywhere from...
...mall lately, where the parking lot is packed and you can spend a vacation day in line to pay for a shirt. Malls still offer plenty of advantages. You can touch, compare and try on the merchandise--important for items like shoes. And, of course, you can buy it today. We still love instant gratification...
...that Ventura is taking a time-out, and it's also a '90s irony: today's political culture craves authenticity but bristles when it actually gets some. But ride with the Guv in his Lincoln Navigator, and you find that even the chastened Ventura is more candid than 99% of pols. On the Cuban trade embargo he says what self-styled truth tellers like Bill Bradley don't: "It's stupid. Fidel's outlasted eight Presidents. Is it an ego thing? Do we have to wait for him to die?" He's the rare non-Democratic Governor who gives Clinton...
...also led to a vicious cycle. Once factory owners realized that time was money--a notion that led to the first so-called efficiency experts in the 1920s--the idea of making every second count began to spread through society. Result: efficiency became an American virtue. Today every conceivable business is open around the clock; we multitask frantically, applying makeup or talking on the phone while driving; we cram our kids' lives with team sports and lessons. Children don't play anymore: they schedule play dates. "We are," says author Gleick, "driven by time...
...such a timepiece would be virtually useless today: computers, communications satellites, global-positioning receivers and telephone-switching systems need a precision beyond anything conceivable even 50 years ago. Time technology long since abandoned mechanical devices and even the hum of quartz crystals. For true precision--accuracy to a billionth of a second--you need to travel, virtually at least, to a place like the perfectly circular, well-guarded park that sits in northwest Washington. There, on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, a nondescript concrete building houses the nerve center of the U.S. Directorate of Time...