Word: banal
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...supposedly supplied 300,000 tons of nonexistent milk powder to a Cuban importer via Bonlat, a Cayman Islands subsidiary that held the fake Bank of America account. "What struck and surprises me is the simplicity," says Francesco Greco, the senior magistrate in Milan on the case. "It was almost banal...
...impressive. "It's got so much going on. So much acid, so much tannin, so much fruit--you taste them so distinctly that with age they'll meld into one distinct flavor," Payne says. It's that same blending that Payne does, mixing the effete and the unpretentious, the banal with the surreal, the painstakingly honed with the unretouched, that make his movies so good. At least that sounds smart after four really big glasses of wine. --With reporting by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles
...divine is easy to spot, what's harder to make out is the banal. But it's there too--in the meetings the priests convene to schedule their planting dates and combat the problem of crop pests; in the plans they draw up to maintain aqueducts and police conduits; in the irrigation proposals they consider and approve, the dam proposals they reject or amend. "The religion has a temple at every node in the irrigation system," says David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. "The priests make decisions and enforce the code...
...article appeared on a website run by the Party's flagship People's Daily and became a must-read among knowledgeable Chinese?even though it was wiped off the Internet within 24 hours and Chinese media were barred from covering the case. The misconduct Huang alleges is almost banal?he says local officials deprived residents of their homes and manipulated land prices. What makes the case sensational is the rare dragon's-eye view given by a Party insider. So far, it has done Huang little good. Local officials insist he has not been detained, but he has been intensively...
...modern tricks of the wizardocracy--polls and focus groups--are not inherently malevolent. They are only as banal as the people who read them. Bill Clinton was a master: it was a focus group that taught him that it was better to "invest" in education than to "spend" on it. Clinton also knew when to ignore the polls, as he did on the Mexican bailout. Most pols aren't so clever, though. This year John Kerry and George W. Bush are relying on ancient market-tested formulations like (in Kerry's case) "Health care is a right, not a privilege...