Word: axioms
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Here I invoke the inexpressive but useful axiom that history repeats itself. Many of the fashionable and peer-bonded teens who blithely smoked their Pall Malls in the ’50s have since succumbed to emphysema. And there are other studies, too numerous to cite, which indicate one final, fatal similarity: cells and cigs are both carcinogenic. In the same way that, in 1954, cigarette companies formed the Tobacco Industry Research Committee to scrutinize the effects of cigarettes, so now are wireless companies commissioning similar studies on cell phones. Just as a hacking cough is today the sign...
...reasoning, it seems, is yet another twist on the axiom that "bad news for Main Street is good news for Wall Street." That saw is predicated on the notion that bad economic news means the Fed is more likely to cut interest rates, cheering stocks and bonds alike with the prospect of cheaper money and stimulated corporate investment. And bad news there was - the Conference Board reported that consumer confidence fell in a July of stagnant stock prices and rising layoffs, and the National Association of Purchasing Managers said that manufacturing, in a coma for many months now, was still...
...speak ill of the dead" is an ancient axiom. But there were few good words said of Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, after she was shot in the head in a car outside Vitello's Italian restaurant in Studio City, Calif. Gold digger. Star stalker. Con artist. Grifter. Those were the polite descriptions. Bakley was the mother of two girls born out of wedlock: a seven-year-old who she claimed was fathered by rock-'n'-roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis (paternity was never substantiated), and an 11-month-old she said had been sired by Marlon Brando's troubled...
...situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories is bad, and it is unlikely to improve in the near future. Or so the international media would have us believe. After all, as the axiom goes, bad news makes good copy. While the tragic events of recent months have fully justified such dismal assessments, they have hardly substantiated the media's consistently-and grossly-distorted portrayal of the conflict. Inflammatory headlines, manipulated photographs and utterly unprofessional articles tell a tale of the righteous outrage of the Palestinian masses, long oppressed at Israel's bloody hands, whose innocent children are now slaughtered...
...There is an old axiom: much law, little justice. We like to think the law provides some measure of justice, and sometimes it does. But justice is a more cosmic principle than what the law embraces. The law is good for figuring out the penalty for jaywalking but not for adjudicating each of our just deserts...