Word: sisyphean
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Congress will stage its Sisyphean ordeal again this year. In May Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming introduced a new version of his much debated Immigration Reform and Control Act, and the Senate held hearings on the bill last month. It is the third time in four years that Congress has considered Simpson's legislation. In 1984, with the cosponsorship of Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky, immigration reform passed both houses, only to expire in conference committee. This year Simpson is carrying on the legislative struggle without Mazzoli, who has declined to cosponsor the bill without support from...
Even if imported products meet Japanese standards, businessmen complain, the cost and effort required to substantiate that claim are virtually Sisyphean. A new pharmaceutical product, for example, must be tested on more than 150 Japanese patients at five or more medical facilities, even if it has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or another national drug- testing agency. The application data demanded for each new product run from 5,000 to 20,000 pages, and they are reviewed behind closed doors. Says Klaus Kran, president of Searle Yakuhin K.K., the Osaka-based affiliate of the U.S. drug...
...seemed there was nothing to do but begin again, elsewhere, in a far different latitude. And so began the Sisyphean strivings, the apotheosis of praxis to the source of all knowledge. What I was trying to uproot and destroy was a part of myself, the very talent that had brought me to Harvard in the first place. I buried my hopes for a career with the great books, and those buried hopes became a throbbing pain...
...Turandot in 1926. Certain later operas have enjoyed a succès d'estime, and some (like Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes) are even produced fairly often; but in general, the repertory of the past half-century has been a closed shop. Thus the Met has the Sisyphean task of producing and reproducing the same roster of familiar works. When the Met was young, many of today's warhorses were new; but now opera is in danger of becoming a dead art, remembering the past yet still condemned to repeat...
Filling up 90 minutes nightly is a Sisyphean task. Several times last week the final 15 minutes degenerated into a painful post-mortem of the previous hour and 15. Early shares in selected cities averaged about 8 compared with Carson's 20. Advertisers apparently remain confident: according to Silverman, national spots are already sold out through March. But to relieve late-night audience ennui, the show must first cure its own schizophrenia. Notes Thicke: "It will take about six to eight weeks to find a groove that is comfortable. Variety is fine, but we have a little too much...