Word: bleak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Take that title literally: This is No Country for Old Men. It may be no country for any life form more evolved than a Gila Monster. We're talking West Texas here, not far from the U.S.-Mexican border. The landscape is as bleak as the moon's dark side and its relatively few inhabitants lead lives that are scrubbed down to the basics. That is to say, it is pretty much kill or be killed in the Coen brothers adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's spare and unsparing novel...
...desire for universal answers to humanity’s problems is as unrealistic as the utopian philosophies he criticizes. A meta-narrative characterizing utopian thought as the ultimate source of the world’s greatest ills is both unsatisfying and unconvincing. Gray’s outlook is bleak: peace and harmony are dreams we will never realize, and more wars of religion and utopia loom overhead as we outstrip the world’s available resources. Gray offers some comfort in his praise of science, an area constantly making new breakthroughs and rewriting human ignorance...
...this one population affected by our war, I realize how poignant that woman’s words once were. Even if an Iraqi refugee wanted to stand on a street corner and beg for money, he or she couldn’t. The situation is much more bleak, more frightening, and more voiceless. What to do when a homeless person asks you for help, is still a valid question, but what to do when a refugee does not ask you for help is an even more important question to consider...
Call it the anti-Guantnamo. Young Saudis are captured in Iraq waging jihad against the American infidels. But instead of being shipped off to a bleak detention camp in Cuba, they are dispatched to a cozy chalet an hour outside the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Technically it's a detention center, but no one is forced to wear an orange jumpsuit or a blindfold. And far from being condemned to solitary confinement, its occupants are free to roam the landscaped courtyard and play Ping-Pong, volleyball and video games...
...become “security moms” who were worried that terrorists would attack their children.“I don’t even know where to begin with the media,” she said, sounding exasperated. “It’s a very bleak period. We should hit the press over the head with ‘Freedom of the Press’ so that they can be a counter to the government.”Faludi attributed recent attitudes in the press to the growing trend of newspaper ownership by large corporations...