Word: senselessly
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This is violence of a special kind, not "brother, can you spare a dime" stuff but anarchic, pointless, Clockwork Orange violence. It is particularly reviled because it is perfectly senseless. We tend to call serial murders senseless, but we know that buried deep inside a Wayne Williams lies a horrible, though perhaps unfathomable, purpose. We suspect a reason, some powerful, twisted logic. Anomic violence, on the other hand, is truly senseless. Thus crimes of madness elicit from us revulsion; crimes of need (like Jean Valjean's) sympathy; but crimes for fun, for a video game, for no purpose, elicit rage...
...bricks," she said as friends reached out to steady her. "All my five sons and my son-in-law were killed." In a dark corner of a corridor, Amrit Kaur sat with her head swathed in a blood-soaked bandage. "My husband was burned alive. My children were beaten senseless. Then my house was set on fire. My children could not come out, and they were burned inside." With that she broke down and began to weep...
America's national defense and prestige have risen even more conspicuously. Our support for the British defense of the Falkland Islands, the selfless service of Marines as a peacekeeping force in Lebanon, the lifting of the senseless Soviet gram embargo, the election of a free government in H. Salvadot and the advent of peace negotiations there, the withdrawal of martial lass restrictions upon the people of Poland, and marked growth in relations with Communist China ill represent significant international achievements...
Dissenting Justice Marie Garibaldi said that it could open the door to "speculative and subjective" legal judgments. But Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz wrote that society has now decided it must "do whatever is required ... to stop the senseless loss inflicted by drunken drivers." Washington seems to agree. Last week Congress approved and sent to the President a bill that will cut federal highway funds for states that do not adopt a minimum drinking...
That is the way his life reads, anyhow, in Bob Woodward's mildly sensational, ultimately senseless account, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (Simon and Schuster, $17.95). The book, kicked off with a front-page serialization launch and favorable review in the Washington Post, where Au thor Woodward heads up the investigative reporting staff, is drawing the kind of hoopla usually kindled by more conventional show-biz behemoths; an excerpt has also appeared in Playboy. Like some Hollywood superproduction, the book boasts a long list of cameo appearances by stars (Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams, Robert...