Word: inertia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...cannot be run on fun and flowers, the Beatles be latedly discovered after the death in 1967 of their canny manager and mentor, Brian Epstein. More interested in gadding about than tending to their enterprises, they left their convoluted corporate empire (see chart) to run on its own momentum. Inertia was not a successful philosophy. Three of the biggest companies in which the Beatles hold stakes have lately tumbled into trouble...
...barman. The barman (Jon Lee) is a model of stoic restraint and may represent serenity. He also represents something Williams does not admire: a planned hibernation of the spirit in which one evades any commitment to love, hate or passion. Instead of eloquence, the play offers truncated, disjointed sentences. Inertia usurps the role of action; the prevailing mood is torpor. All that Williams seems able to contribute is a little banal philosophizing about how the creation of art saps a man's life. Still, there is an axiom of the race track that a thoroughbred will eventually revert...
...with a graceless statement after Consolidation's supposedly "safe" Consol No. 9 turned into a gas-filled grave for 78 mine workers last November. The union boss philosophized that "as long as we mine coal there is always the inherent danger of explosion." Miners also complain about union inertia during this year's successful effort to get a bill through the West Virginia legislature compensating them for black lung, an irreversible condition that results from inhaling coal dust. Led by three coal-country physicians and joined by Congressman Ken Hechler and omni-purpose crusader Ralph Nader, most...
Given the ignorance and inertia of many state and local legislative bodies, the un happy fact is that few cities are likely to copy the Southfield formula. Chances for significant tax reform in Congress look only slightly better...
...unusual arrangement of the desk, such as Phonophilia (installing a panoply of telephones, pushbuttons, flashing lights and loudspeakers) or Papyrophobia (the "clean desk" syndrome, indulged in because "every piece of paper is a reminder of the work the papyrophobe cannot do"). Other signs of the syndrome include Cachinatory Inertia, "the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business," as well as Side-Issue Specialization, a commonplace substitute for competence characterized by the motto: "Look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves...