Word: harmless
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...undetected virus of the soul, a bug caught some time in the formative years but remaining dormant until some temporary weakness of the mind or spirit permits it to break loose. Surely such a classic pathology lies behind the unexpected passion that afflicts the otherwise kindly and harmless Don Alejandro in a wise and compassionate Spanish film called The Nest. The strength of Eric Rohmer's equally excellent Le Beau Manage is that it shows how rationalism, which is supposed to immunize us against our more maddened desires, can, when indulged in to excess, also provide a breeding ground...
CAPE CANAVERAL., Ha-The shuttle Columbia testing a fuel saving maneuver 186 miles above Earth, experienced "unexplained torque" yesterday that caused a series of harmless pitch and roll movements. The phenomenon went away as mysteriously as it began and officials were curious but not worried...
Your description of polytheistic worship as amiably human and relatively harmless ignores the horrors of most idolatrous systems. These religions regularly included human sacrifices like offering human hearts to the sun-god or casting infants into flames...
...stage Annie was a harmless, punchless confection with an O.K. score featuring that unavoidable pop hymn Tomorrow. Was this amiable amble down Mummery Lane worth the Tony awards, the five-year run on Broadway (still going strong), a record $9.5 million for the movie rights? On the evidence of this film, no. Instead of elfin simplicity, Director John Huston offers production numbers full of empty extravagance, a host of familiar characters (like Punjab and the Asp) with little to do-and a chorus of baby Mormans knowingly strutting their stuff, breaking the sound and charm barriers...
...metaphysics of war makes this configuration: nuclear bombs preside, in a dark, speculative way, over the human imagination of war. Nuclear is to conventional war what the monotheism of the avenging God was to the old amiably human and relatively harmless idolatries of polytheism. The wrath of God becomes the dread mushroom and megadeath and firestorm-totality, cessation. It is not relative, like the old wars, but absolute, the utter blank of extinction. Nuclear war sits in the mind like the lurid medieval vision of hell: horrible-and yet, well, hypothetical...