Word: staid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such is the razzle-dazzle of French President Nicolas Sarkozy that he is able to turn a speech to business leaders on such staid topics as labor contracts, taxation, inflation and purchasing power into some truly captivating theatrics. During a nearly 45-minute address billed as the blueprint of the second phase of Sarkozy's economic reforms, the gesticulating, sardonic, often dramatic President drew applause, laughter and even a gasp or two of excitement as he described how he intends to make France a more competitive economy...
...began as a spinoff of American Media Inc.'s National Enquirer - a way of keeping the old presses running when the Enquirer switched to color. Though the staid name chosen for the paper suggested a down-market version of Foreign Affairs, it was for its first few years one more celebrity gossip rag. Then Eddie Clontz became editor, and WWN gleefully leapt into the quicksand of fake news. (Read all about the paper's history in a comprehensive Washington Post obit...
...thugs" responsible for the city's sky-high murder rate. And a string of guilty pleas from corrupt city officials, including one that led to the resignation this month of popular City Council member Oliver Thomas, has elicited charges that white prosecutors are motivated by race; even the somewhat staid Louisiana Weekly, an 80-year-old newspaper targeted to African-American readers, recently ran an op-ed piece claiming the U.S. Attorney's Office was abetting a white power grab...
...preservation of classical Japanese brush painting-a genre executed on traditional paper (washi) or silk, with nature as its most common subject. The movement succeeded in defending native painting from European acculturation, but the price paid was ossification. Nihonga artists were required to stick to landscapes and other staid topics. "It's all flowers and Mount Fuji," says Nishimura. "But that stuff doesn't sell anymore...
...Even more than Tenmyouya's stylized samurai or Matsui's feminist ghosts, Machida's surreal and often frankly sexual paintings-like Little Boy: Good Luck Talisman-seem to have little in common with staid 19th century forms. But Machida says artistic categories are "just brand names," so she doesn't feel as though she is violating some unwritten code. "I admire Japanese painting, but I learned from the tradition without even noticing it." And that's the point. As diverse as they are, as different as they are from their flowers-and-Mount Fuji predecessors, the neo-nihonga painters aren...