Word: plastics
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...They are not doing the kind of killing that the government is doing." In all, about 1.7 million Rwandans, out of a population of 8.1 million, have fled their homes. Most remain within the country, dodging the army, the gangs or the rebels, streaming along roads carrying clothes in plastic bags, mattresses on their heads. Last week, as the numbers of refugees continued to swell, U.N. officials were desperately trying to sustain the horde...
...breasts. The stands are large, square and metal, but they convey the symmetry and preposterous nature of surgically enhanced breasts. A montage of porno clips plays on one screen (or nipple, as the case may be). However, a breast implant rests on the screen itself, distorting the image. A plastic casing forces the viewer to stare at the monitor in order to comprehend the video. After an initial shock, the audience becomes conscious of the nature of its gaze: the clinical yet voyeuristic setting renders it incredibly real and perverse. On the other monitor, an educational program informs the viewer...
...cashless era of the philosophers finally arrived? So far, with every advance made by encoded plastic cards and automated billing systems, there have also been glitches or concerns about fraud and privacy. At Chemical Bank, for example, automated teller machines mistakenly deducted a total of $16 million from 100,000 customer accounts in February because of a typographical error in a single line of computer code. The bank bounced 430 checks as a result of the malfunction...
...main weapon against cash and checks is plastic -- credit cards, bank debit cards and so-called smart cards. Together they represent 9% of total consumer payment transactions and are expected to reach 15% by 2001. Besides taxicabs and newsstands, credit cards are employed in parking garages and movie theaters and could soon be the way that Americans pay their taxes, if industry lobbyists prevail. But since card issuers charge an average of 16.5% while the irs extracts only 7% for late payments, consumer groups warn that taxpayers should be wary. So far, stiff interest rates have done little to curb...
Both credit and debit cards could one day be eclipsed by smart cards, which look like conventional bank plastic but store information on computer chips instead of magnetic stripes. Such cards could hold, say, the profile of an airline passenger, including his frequent-flyer points and seat preferences. With a single swipe of a card through an airline's electronic reader, a traveler could make a reservation and get a seat assignment...