Word: procrusteans
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...Never seen Twitter so united in sarcasm as over the Nobel announcement." With that tweet - which at a mere 59 characters is terse even by Twitter's Procrustean standards - Alex Evans, a.k.a. @alexevansuk, a nonresident fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, sums up the prevailing sentiment on the microblogging website...
...heavy argument indeed. But Robinson does not pursue it doggedly or even systematically (to have done so with such elusive material as music would have been painfully Procrustean). What he offers instead is an interesting potpourri of perceptions, suggestions and possibilities. He demonstrates, for example, the despair of the hero of Winterreise by noting that Schubert consistently describes reality in a minor key and changes into the major only when he is shifting into fantasy. This is a somewhat technical point, necessarily, for most writing about music is either technical or gush. In addition, Robinson has the wit to confess...
...victory,” the authors of anti-war antics offer a platitude: “Patriotism should be equated with peace, not war.” But true patriotism has little to do with either, and it is folly to force love of country onto the Procrustean bed of a single policy...
While the state's Procrustean protection mangles official religion into crude propaganda, the churches not endorsed by the government face persecution by a wide array of bureaucratic and security agencies. Their members are often harassed and bullied if they choose not to join the official churches, and even run the risk of losing jobs and having their children barred from school. The administrators of the underground churches, and especially the Catholic Church which remains loyal to the Vatican, are often jailed or sent to labor camps; a considerable number of Catholic bishops are currently detained, while another died last year...
...forcing great thinkers into modern political debates with Procrustean zeal, Justice makes mere politics of political philosophy. Kant should be an end in himself. One should not, and does not, have to locate his thinking on our political spectrum to make him interesting. But students in Justice are required to pluck Kant from the clouds, fumble with him in their untutored hands and mold him to a present-day problem--like smashing a butterfly between one's fingers in order to admire its wings. Such familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least a false and dangerous sense of intimacy...