Some believed that the industry would suffer in the digital age as "voice enhancement" was becoming more prevalent almost as fast as youth and beauty were becoming more of a pre-requisite.
The economic historian Marc Levine thinks there are a lot more areas almost as badly polarised: he reels off Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as examples.
Two smaller "Penetrables" offer more concise, but almost as rewarding, experiences.
And Rick Santorum's campaign said on Monday that he had raised more than $9 million, almost as much as Mr. Romney.
As her rival, Amneris, Margaret Jane Wray musters more fervour, singing almost as forcefully as the WNO chorus, on habitually fine form.
Analysts expect the new company, which will use some variation of the Sky name, to be valued at more than $40 billion, almost as much as the parent company.
Long revered by feminists, Ms. Dickens's music, and especially her songwriting, assumed an even more political cast almost as soon as she began pursuing a solo career in the wake of the duo's breakup in 1976.
But a nascent Web site called Rent the Runway is hoping to make high-end fashions much more accessible and almost as easy as renting a movie from Netflix.
Lipper data show that, for the first ten months of 2003, the seven largest firms involved in the scandal have raked in more than, or almost as much as, they did for all of 2002.
