Word: backgrounders
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...facilitated such a transition. But it can and must be done. After winning his seat in the National Assembly through a by-election held last week, Aziz, who is currently Finance Minister, is now poised to become Pakistan's Prime Minister. If Musharraf is prepared to step into the background and allow Aziz to govern the country, and if Aziz views his premiership as a time to resuscitate the conditions for democracy in Pakistan just as he previously helped resuscitate the country's economy?both big ifs?then there may indeed be cause for optimism...
...this pageant of alleged malfeasance, Golan Cipel was the first sign of trouble. The day McGreevey took his oath of office--Jan. 15, 2002--he quietly named Cipel his special assistant on homeland security. Although it was just four months after 9/11, Cipel did not undergo an extensive background check. Cipel had served as only a low-ranking officer in the Israeli navy and had no counterterrorism expertise. Despite his thin qualifications, he received a $110,000 salary. When reporters started asking questions, McGreevey refused to order a full vetting of Cipel and wouldn't make him available for interviews...
...Vonage uses the public Web, so phone calls travel alongside messages, digital photos and online shopping orders. Traditional phone service, on the other hand, creates a dedicated circuit between you and whomever you're calling. That century-old system is darn near perfect--while Web calls are prone to background buzz--but not nearly as efficient as the Web. Because Vonage can route calls at a lower cost and does not face the fees and taxes imposed on regular phone service, monthly bills are typically half what you would pay the phone company...
...makes a certain kind of cosmic sense that a writer of fantastical literature should come from a relatively mundane background. Clarke, the daughter of a Methodist minister, was born in Nottingham, went to Cambridge and then took a series of publishing jobs in London. The first glimmers of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell came to her during a year she spent teaching English in Bilbao, Spain. "I had a kind of waking dream," Clarke remembers, "about a man in 18th century clothes in a place rather like Venice, talking to some English tourists. And I felt strongly that he had some...
...made an image in Spain of a band of children playing on a street, a heavyset man in a suit and fedora walking through their midst and, in the background, a constellation of windows scattered across the wall of a building. It wasn't a picture about anything. It was a moment most of us would never notice, but in his eyes it became an enigma, so full of suspense, you could almost hear the click of a detonator...