Free Republic

The obvious candidates for word of the year are the labels of the year's big stories -- new words like "microaggression" or resurgent ones like "refugees." But sometimes a big theme is captured in more subtle ways. So for my word of the year, I offer you the revival of "gig" as the name for a new economic order. It's the last chapter in the life of a little word that has tracked the rise and fall of the great American job. "Gig" goes back more than a century as musicians' slang for a date or engagement. Nobody's sure where...

One of my readers is an underemployed 59-year-old man from among us here in the South Suburbs. Call him Harry. He works in information technology. Slowly and wearily, he says: "Once you get past 50, I swear, it gets tough, it gets really tough." For instance, Harry applied for a job with a city of Chicago department that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He got an offer for some contract work. There were no benefits, but it was a paying job. A woman from the city called him one Monday morning and wanted to know if...

Bono incensed as Hillary plays politics at U2 gig By Philip Sherwell in Washington (Filed: 16/10/2005) The Irish rock star, Bono, has been angered by Senator Hillary Clinton's use of a U2 concert this week to raise funds for her political campaign coffers - even though he is a good friend of her husband, Bill. "U2 concerts are categorically not fund-raisers for any politician. They are rock concerts for U2 fans," said his close associate, Jamie Drummond, who runs Data, the Third World advocacy group set up by Bono with Sir Bob Geldof. "If any political fund-raising events take place...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Digital media hogs can celebrate. A new, whopping 400-gigabyte hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies can store up to 400 hours of standard television programming, 45 hours of high-definition programming or more than 6,500 hours of digital music. Previously, the largest such drive available was a 300-gigabyte product from Maxtor Corp., said Dave Reinsel, industry analyst at IDC. San Jose-based Hitachi said it designed the monster drive, the Deskstar 7K400, for audio/video products such as digital video recorders. Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, predicts the number of households with DVRs will increase to nearly...