Word: absurdness
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...David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically...
...absurd thought that someone must be responsible for such an enormous injustice wouldn't go away. As I went about the city talking to survivors, I found myself repeatedly asking who they thought was to blame. Was there a reason to it all? Could God do such a thing to a people so proudly religious, who had already suffered so much? Most looked at me blankly; they were far too preoccupied with feeding their surviving family members and burying the dead to consider such existential musings. One or two even grew angry. Was I saying God had punished Aceh? Wasn...
Should Hong Kong aspire to be the Monte Carlo of China? The question may seem absurd. For a start, Hong Kong is a commercial city of nearly 7 million people; Monte Carlo a town of just 16,000. Yet Monte Carlo is a metaphor for things that Hong Kong should stand for?quality, wealth, low taxes and a sort of independence. A more obvious comparison might be London, which, despite Britain's decline, has maintained its global status thanks to a multinational population and the determination of its financial markets to see the world as their hinterland...
...move to Florida, a closeted husband, a house-destroying fire, a folded magazine, and breast cancer. Although she emerged on the other side married to the love of her life, she demonstrated a playful ease with pain that only comes with experience and a damned strong sense of the absurd...
...point out that those who voted against the E.U. constitution did so for vastly different reasons. That's true, but it doesn't mean their reasons were incoherent. The "no" votes prove that it is absurd to force vastly different countries into the same economic and social straitjacket. If different nations have different ideas as to what kind of economy they want, they are united in believing that they should be allowed to decide for themselves instead of having a one-size-fits-nobody solution imposed from above. The constitution would remove power from national governments in almost all policy...