Word: xanadu
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...ever attains one. These opulent shrines to capitalism we regard with a mixture of envy, awe and abhorrence: "Isn't that ridiculous--nobody needs a house that big." Or, "Just think how hard it would be to keep that thing clean." The fact that he or she has a Xanadu--and you don't--proves that the owner is a greedy hustler or a planet-polluting slumlord with close Mob ties who should be flogged into bankruptcy like Donald Trump (and, unlike him, left there...
...everybody was pulling for Gates, who proved that even an uber-nerd whom the rest of us beat up in the playground could make it big in the land of opportunity. But the world's richest man made the classic hubristic mistake: building what one newspaper called the "new Xanadu" and bragging about it. Gates' high-tech haven would top even Hearst's epically garish San Simeon as the most grandiose castle in America. But as Hearst once quipped of his estate--which housed, among other things, a large zoo--"Pleasure is what you can afford...
Individual E-mail accounts, personal exercise equipment--even vibrating massage chairs. It may sound like a business traveler's Xanadu, but it's business service as usual at Hotel Phoenix in Singapore after its recent $7.6 million renovation. Not only did the makeover boost the business hotel's ranking from 3 1/2 to four stars last year, but for the additional comforts, guests are now paying a mere $87, about $20 less than they were paying a year ago. "It's a matter of repositioning and offering true value for money," says Margaret Low, the hotel's marketing director...
...idea of a global hypertext system had been championed since the 1960s by a visionary named Ted Nelson, who had pursued it as the "Xanadu" project. But Nelson wanted Xanadu to make a profit, and this vastly complicated the system, which never got off the ground. Berners-Lee, in contrast, persuaded CERN to let go of intellectual property to get the Web airborne. A no-frills browser was put in the public domain--downloadable to all comers, who could use it, love it, send it to friends and even improve...
...novel's unwritten law is that time eventually earns a dispensation for past sins. Tough old pros like Alfred Gronevelt, official owner of the Clericuzio-controlled Xanadu Hotel in Las Vegas, and ruthless Eli Marrion, geriatric head of LoddStone Studios, are, like the Don, the novel's honored guests. Puzo's younger heroes are fewer but conspicuous: the Don's Adonis-like grandnephew Croccifixio ("Cross") De Lena and his film-goddess girlfriend, Athena Aquitane. The book's fools and villains are ruled by passions, impulses and grotesque egos. A degenerate gambler and loudmouthed deadbeat lurches obnoxiously toward his inevitable fate...