Word: sisyphean
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Writing is never easy, but some people find it far more troublesome than others. For young children, pencil and paper can present Sisyphean problems: by the time some youngsters have formed the letters, they have lost track of what they wanted to say. Moreover, extensive revision, the key to good writing, is sometimes hard to squeeze on a sheet of paper, handwritten or typed. It is a rare and unpopular teacher who requires any but the most superficial rewriting, since changing sentences may mean recopying a whole page...
...prisons. I don't think we can." Thigpen's prescription is repeated in every state, by hundreds of prison officials, judges and scholars. "We have got to look at prison space," Thigpen says, "as a scarce commodity to be used sparingly." The alternative to a Herculean (not to say Sisyphean) prison-construction jag, agrees Carlson, "is to do a better job deciding who ought to go to prison, and for how long. We have to be more selective...
Democrats in office will conform increasingly to the new orthodoxy, and change will roll back, a Sisyphean boulder down the slope of the latter curve. And even if the pause lasts only a decade, it will be too long. The great experiment of the last century, conducted primarily in the United States, has been to see if we could keep the wave from crashing, somehow moderate its peak or build up its base so that it never hits shore. Americans, in 1980, have given up on that experiment, which demands quick analysis and dramatic, constant change, with hardly a look...