Word: overblown
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite its overblown style, the open letter is a rare show of frankness. It does not proclaim from on high that the problem of fraud in scientific research will be taken care of. Instead it says: we're stumped, got any ideas? That is not the typical way Harvard administrators deal with problems. Such openness from administrators is always welcome, though in this instance it seems motivated by the peculiar knottiness of the problem...
...workmen at Hanford sometimes indulged in cocaine and marijuana. Local investigators discovered, among other things, that a number of employees had had their security clearance revoked for drug use during the past two years. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Wilson contends that charges of drug abuse have been grossly overblown...
...nearly impossible to design convention centers that function efficiently yet satisfy the soul. They are workaday Gargantuas that tend to be overblown shows of engineering (the Moscone Center in San Francisco) or imposing fortresses (McCormick Place in Chicago). But New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, designed by James Freed of I.M. Pei & Partners, is exceptional. The vast interior (1.7 million sq. ft.), with its weblike metal skeleton, resembles the glorious train sheds of the late 19th century and, of course, London's Crystal Palace...
...Hollywood did not really need an epitaph, but Mogul David O. Selznick produced one anyway, appropriately overblown, in a moody conversation with Ben Hecht: "Hollywood's like Egypt, full of crumbling pyramids . . . It'll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands...
Liberty and Power seems to be torn by two impulses. On the one hand, Oscar Handlin, who retired last year, may have felt compelled to write it as the definitive version of his view of the main themes in American history. But on the other hand, as the rather overblown subtitle suggests, this book may have been meant for the bookshelves of Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. As the latter, it may succeed. But as the former, it would never have won Handlin tenure...