Word: foolishness
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...Tuesday, seniors dutifully checked the website set up to reveal this year’s Class Day speaker selection, but, of course, they were foolish to believe that a single website could long survive bearing the weight of the name of this then-unknown titan of entertainment. And, in fact, it came crashing down. When word finally spread from the Senior Class Committee that the elected speaker would be Matt Lauer, some laughed and some cried. His name sounded vaguely familiar to us, so we keyed up Wikipedia and YouTube to recall the accomplishments of this luminary, whoever...
...presumptuous for me to say we’re going to do A, B, C,” he said. “I am not the kind of superintendent who is going to enter a district and say ‘I know better.’ How foolish. What a recipe for failure.”Heather Hoffman, a parent of an Amigos School student, said that she thought Young was the best candidate of the three.“If he means what he says then he is what I have been wishing for in a superintendent...
...investment officer David Swensen and his associate Michael Schmidt encouraged turning newspapers into “nonprofit, endowed institutions—like colleges and universities… [to enhance] autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down.” This is incredibly foolish, not to mention expensive: The last thing we need populating the news business is hundreds of lumbering, immortal white elephants sucking the talent out of the business of economically reporting news. Most damagingly, newspaper bailouts, endowments, and other artificial life support would crowd out human capital from being invested efficiently...
Gelb is at his best describing the three "demons" that render America's politicians congenitally foolish and unable to project power creatively - our tendency to turn principles into dogma, domestic political pressures, and the delusion that America can do anything. George W. Bush was badly boggled by all three. His "Freedom Agenda," which wantonly promoted democracy, led to disasters like the rise of Hamas in Gaza (after Bush forced elections that neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority wanted). Bush also played domestic tough-guy politics disgracefully: his opponents were inevitably "soft on terrorism." And he played the darker avenues...
...were young and foolish. We felt we were committing an idealized, ideological action to obtain government-insured money and that we were not stealing from ordinary people. In the end, we stole someone's life." -Apologizing during a 2002 court appearance in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Myrna Opsahl, who was killed during a 1975 bank robbery. (AP, March...