Word: trivialities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Governor Volpe's request is neither whimsical nor trivial. Last year he submitted the mental health bill to the legislature, but certain Democratic leaders, vengeful over the Sales Tax, saw to it that the bill was defeated without adequate debate or consideration. Governor Volpe wants to use the special session to focus the attention of the public and the legislators on this measure which is the keystone of his legislative program. He knows that if the bill must wait until the 1967 regular session it will again be killed in midsummer without fair or full debate...
...cucking stool. Its heritage is the referendum, an instant, pain less substitute that leaves discussion of controversial issues to the press and their resolution to the curtained conscience of the voter. Sometimes the issues attract as much attention as the candidates, but more often they are so trivial-or so confusing-that they should never have been put on the ballot at all. Last week's election had a few of both kinds...
...target is the artificial stimulation of the consumer to buy in vast quantities things he never wanted until he was told. Often such complaints sound highly plausible, particularly when reinforced by a wrecking ball hitting an old landmark or an infuriating commercial peddling a clearly needless "improvement" in some trivial product. Yet waste is not what it seems to be. The term implies a moral as well as an economic judgment, and its meaning varies with both setting and purpose...
...barbs the sharper. University administrators, he says, "have, quite literally, nothing to say," so they talk "dreary rubbish." Faculties are "caught both in the hideous jungle of academic bureaucracy and their own blind professional conservatism." Many doctoral dissertations are "patient parsing of the obvious and the irrelevant," yielding "laboriously trivial discoveries." It all adds up to "a vast educational enterprise built entirely upon a caste of learned men whose learning has no relevance to the young. It is a vision of madness accomplished...
...deplorable thing," he says, "is that young writers, too lazy to gather the facts themselves, sit around and sneer at all that is said. With the conference reeking of pseudosophisti-cation and half-baked cynicism, perspective inevitably becomes blurred. The result is an accenting of the negative and trivial story that obscures the truly important...