Word: banal
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...Productions; 48 pp.; $7.95) continues the annual series of books that collect a year's-worth of Kochalka's daily online strip. More like haikus than indulgent chronicles of the author's day, each strip consists of just four, or less, panels showcasing a singular moment. These can be banal (June 27, 2002: "Uncomfortably tossing and turning till my legs get twisted in and bound by the sheets") or funny (June 6: "I gagged while brushing my teeth ? expelling red wine, venison, fillet mignon and hand made sausage?the color scheme was actually kind of beautiful?") Kochalka has a kind...
...dinner party, the scene is a strange one. Representatives from biological supply companies hawk arcane apparati—airborne pathogen detectors, emergency treatment kits—from booths along the periphery of the room. Conversation topics range from the banal to the bioanthropological...
...education” and will “introduce bodies of knowledge, concepts, and major texts.” In theory, these courses should provide a fantastic centerpiece to a Harvard education. (Whether in practice they will be nothing more than Core classes with traditional hoop-jumping and banal response papers, of course, remains to be seen.) Still, it is excellent news that a real attempt may soon be made to restore an academic canon obscured by the nonsensical ethos of the Core...
...tutorials can be minimized by increasing the merit of the tutorials which remain. The history department, for example, eliminated one of its two junior tutorials this year, a class which, in spite of the spin put on it by the senior professors in charge, was nothing more than banal busywork dressed up as vital grounding in the science of research. And I have no doubt that many other departments would benefit from similar addition by subtraction...
...compliment her woeful selections, Stone offered a variety of banal snippets of advice. “There are two qualities that make a wine good: balance and complexity. If a wine has both, it is in the top 5 percent of wines in the world,” she explained—without, of course, explaining anything. “I love to smell wine for five or 10 minutes before I take a taste of it,” she added pretentiously...