Word: dullness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Though Borg is a dulls enough fellow, in this company "dull" is appealing. Lendl is a chilly, self centered, condescending, meanspirited, arrogant man with a nice forehand. McEnroe is tennis' current, and quintessential, spoiled brat. Connors is a time-honored boor. With Borg now gone, there may be no one left to root for but the umpires...
Consistency is also always potentially dull, even when the consistency demonstrated happens to be excellence. John Havlicek, never former basketball star of the Boston Celtics, almost never made a mistake on the court. He used the backboard with astounding precision, and stood exactly where he was supposed to on every fast break. Yet Havlicek was a far less satisfying player to watch than Philadelphia's Julius Erving, who continually sur prises spectators and defenses with moves no one (including him self) is possibly anticipate. One might argue that Erving is consistently amazing, but the reason he so grasps...
This said, one must still allow for that rarest kind of consistency that is neither funny, dull, hazardous nor stifling. Call this the sublime consistency, which, instead of delimiting the truth enhances it - the consistency of an Ella Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Alec Guinness or Isaac Stern. But then, life itself has been inconsistent in producing such consistent pleasures. And once in a while, a consistency comes forward that is both sublime and foolish, that of Don Quixote, for instance, who mounted his premise and stayed the course, eventually proving less mad than inspired...
Brandenburg called Rubbia "exciting and audacious," adding that his willingness to follow-up on his own ideas led him to the W particle. "He's the fastest moving man around," Brandenburg said. "When Cairo is around there's never a dull moment...
When Washington journalists were polled in 1979, the economics beat ranked a lowly eleventh in prestige among 13 categories of reporting. Today it is a prime assignment, especially in television, where the world of budgets and finance was long written off as hopelessly dull and nonvisual. Since the beginning of 1980, the number of network reporters and commentators covering economics news has increased from five to nine. The surge in status should not be surprising: economics has become hot politics and important news. The most dramatic battles on Capitol Hill during the Reagan Administration have involved taxes and budgets...