Word: speciousness
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Looking for the sunny, specious hucksterism of the campaign trail? Step right up--Hillary will give it to you. This year's model is advertised as new and improved--less formidable and more fun, tenderized by a year of public humiliation, performing the silly rituals that campaigns are made of (hefting Hank Aaron's bat at the Baseball Hall of Fame, tucking into barbecue at a local rib joint) and loving them. Though one can't help suspecting that she sometimes feels she's slumming, she never lets it show. No doubt she is genuinely enjoying this moment of stepping...
Moreover, for the House to occasion a trial in which Monica S. Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and other specious characters would take the stand in front of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist would be to drag this nation, weary of scandal and partisan posturing, through the mud for much...
...rankings have also become enormously controversial. Among the schools critical of the system are members of U.S. News's own top-25 club: Berkeley, Tufts, Rice, M.I.T. and Wesleyan. Critics rally around Stanford president Gerhard Casper's censure of the "specious formulas and spurious precision" of the lists. What is wrong, many say, is that the conclusions are based too much on input--the current reputation of each school and the attributes of incoming students. More helpful, they say, would be a measure of output--what consumers (that's what applicants really are) are likely to get in exchange...
...adjective he chose to describe Lowell was "diverse." Such careless and meaningless use of language--of public relations euphemisms, to be exact--indicates the monolithic commitment to diversity among intellectuals today. Unfortunately, the intellectuals commit themselves only to specious diversity, to diversity they can quantify easily and trot out to belligerent students, faculty members and, most importantly, donors. They care little for true diversity, diversity of the mind and the soul. This short-hand diversity appears most clearly in the way intellectuals now defend affirmative action...
...with Chevron and Microsoft. By 2:45 it was an upside panic. In fact, Intel triggered a frantic wave of buying simply by not denying a rumor, reported on CNBC, that it was about to announce a massive buyback. In fact, it has one already, but why knock a specious but positive report? In the closing hour I locked in profits from the morning that normally take me three to four quarters to ring up. The rest of the week traders staggered in and out of stocks madly until Friday, when trading seemed to just stop out of sheer exhaustion...