Word: absurd
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...slashed them by as much as half. In 1956, for example, the OCDM asked for $35 million to build air-raid shelters which the hydrogen bomb had largely outdated. And plans for mass evacuation of cities before atomic or hydrogen attack have ranged from the impractical to the absurd...
...denied that the U.S. Air Force is conducting provocative nights." Said the spokesman for the U.S. delegation to the U.N.: "We have always been willing to discuss any charges made against us. Witness the fantastic accusations directed at us-potato bugs, germ warfare and others-all proved to be absurd and untrue...
...Soren Kierkegaard has led a return to the primitive essentials of Christianity by his re-definition of true faith as deep belief which not only is unjustified by the available evidence, but is irrelevant to all possible evidence or even runs headlong against it--belief which, is, in short, "absurd." The claim to have gotten "beyond" rational thought is a form of what Russell regards as the arch-vice, intellectual dishonesty. He would probably say that it is patently impossible to argue with someone who insists on Tertullian's Credo quia absurdum est. Such a case needs a psychiatrist...
...only all embracing tradition to which every member of the University community need assent is the tradition of scholarship. For President Pusey, as for many others, it might seem absurd for a man to be "ultimately concerned" merely with scholarship. But Harvard is not an individual. It is a corporate entity deriving its strength from the fact that its members agree upon a common purpose--the pursuit of their individual visions of truth wherever these may lead. For many, perhaps for most, the search leads to the Christian Revelation of God. But that is the concern not of the University...
According to Baudelaire's definition of a superior man-"He is not a specialist" -Robert Graves is distinctly superior. He has strongly held, closely reasoned, occasionally absurd opinions on everything under the sun and-considering his longstanding infatuation with the lunar White Goddess-on everything under the moon too. Not the least fascinating thing about this book is his delight in the sound of his own voice, whether he writes about the Whitaker Negroes,* a child peer of England, Saint Paul, E. E. Cummings, U.S. education, nightmares or poetry...