Word: absurdly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Portly Footballer. That world, on the first night aboard, looks like a floating opera buffa of the absurd. In a corridor amidships, a 22-year-old stock clerk has blocked the way of a nurse from Detroit, one of the youngest women aboard. He does not discuss Albert Einstein. "Are you really from Detroit?" he asks. "Yes, Detroit." "Gee, I was there in 1965, Detroit." "It's nice, isn't it?"'"Sure is, buy ya a drink...
...Your revealing article "The Second Phase in Paris" [Dec. 6] gave me serious doubts as to the sincere .desires of the four parties concerned to achieve a "just and honorable peace." It seems absurd that mature men, especially those honored in the ranks of world diplomacy and charged with the awesome responsibility of ending a war that has become one of the most unpopular and ethically debatable in history, could spend months haggling over such minuscule points of procedure as the shape of the conference table and the number of doors leading to the main hall. It was estimated that...
...dignify their often absurd arguments over such ceremonial questions, diplomats talk about "modalities." The word is derived from "modal," which pertains to form as opposed to substance -and history is studded with episodes where wrangles over form all but prevented negotiators from ever getting down to substance...
...apparently see it the same way. They want two rectangular tables, with the U.S. and South Viet Nam seated at one, and North Viet Nam and the N.L.F. at the other, to prevent the guerrillas from getting a whole side of a table to themselves. It might have seemed absurd, but in the past, conferences on grave issues have foundered over such trivial "modalities" (see box). And as Hanoi Spokesman Xuan Thuy noted, "Whether it is important or not, it must be resolved. You cannot sit down at a conference without a table...
...whistles, sitars, ouds, organs, harmonicas, violins and gimbris. At a time when the music scene reverberates with cacophony and aggression, they expound gentleness, lyricism and fantasy. As they put it in one of their songs, Ducks on a Pond, they sing "a magic word, speak of hopes with thoughts absurd...