Word: inertias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cloth of chicanery continues to unravel. Among the developments last week: -- Stung by accusations of inertia, the Justice Department said a task force of 10 federal prosecutors was studying B.C.C.I. activities in Washington, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa. Subjects of the investigation will include U.S. politicians and other leaders suspected of receiving millions of dollars from B.C.C.I. in payoffs and bribes. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, while denying charges of foot dragging, assured a House subcommittee that his & department has "committed all necessary resources to unraveling any violations of the United States federal and criminal laws and pursuing any evidence that exists...
...ridiculous academic calendar is due largely to Harvard's Institutional Inertia, a 355-year-old law of physics which holds that things will tend to stay the way they are--no matter how silly they are, no matter how reasonable arguments for change may be. That's why we still have final clubs, baked fish pizziola and a dearth of women and minorities on the faculty. And that's why it's going to be hard to change the face of reading and exam periods...
...Council has taken a small but important step in battling Harvard's Institutional Inertia. It shouldn't stop, however, at simply suggesting a shorter exam period--it should also suggest changes in our insanely protracted reading period...
...trend brings with it dangers as well. Immersion in well-tested, routinized administrative practices can make for inertia as well as efficiency. Layers and layers of bureacracy are inserted between the University's leadership and those it should be serving--namely students and faculty...
Some in Japan are eager for the country to assume new responsibilities around the world commensurate with the country's economic power. But the inertia of 45 years of passive foreign policy, coupled with a deep public commitment to pacifism, makes the present generation of politicians leery of foreign entanglements. Tokyo may soon test new diplomatic waters with a peace initiative in Cambodia, but for better or worse, the country seems destined to measure its diplomacy in terms of its relations with the U.S., its only ally...