Word: trivialization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seems no relic associated with ELVIS PRESLEY is too trivial to fetch a bundle. A North Carolina man last week collected $455 by auctioning three tablespoons of water he claims once occupied a cup from which Elvis drank while performing. Wade Jones says that after an Elvis concert he attended in 1977, he was given the cup by a security guard. For decades he preserved the liquid in a sealed glass vial, but after seeing a grilled cheese sandwich ostensibly bearing an image of the Virgin Mary garner $28,000 on eBay, he decided to part with the holy Elvis...
...idea struck in 1977 when, as a graduate student at M.I.T., Hoffman was introduced to chaos theory. A chaotic system like weather appears to behave randomly but is actually governed by rules. It is also influenced by seemingly trivial tweaks to the system--hence the old romantic notion that a flap of a butterfly's wings in the rain forest of Brazil might give rise to a storm off the coast of Iceland. Perhaps, thought Hoffman, chaos and sensitivity, which make weather so difficult to predict, could be harnessed to purposely change...
...From different sides, ?Fahrenheit? and ?The Passion? proved that, in an era of depressingly trivial pop culture, movies can matter. I hope official Hollywood gets the message about these two message movies. Let?s see if the Motion Picture Academy takes Moore?s dare - since, with his usual hellacious chutzpah, he refused to submit it in the documentary category - and nominates it for Best Picture. In fact, if Academy members have even a pair of cojones among them, they?ll nominate both ?Fahrenheit? ?The Passion? for Best Picture of 2004. Think of it: the outraged Left vs. the religious Right...
...unduly scrutinized because of the actions of a few. For this tiny percentage of students, we implore you to take responsibility for your health and safety. It can be hard to cite non-clichéd arguments about why getting perilously drunk is bad. There are, of course, non-trivial health risks to over-drinking. Cases of sexual assaults are almost always connected to alcohol consumption. Hangovers aren’t fun. Almost every student has heard these arguments before, and sadly they’ve had little effect on the 0.1 percent of stubborn students who insist on drinking...
...mindless celebrity worship and inane pop culture that dominates it. Colleges should create an environment and shape a curriculum that maximizes exposure to the great works and the great thinkers of the Western tradition. Colleges fail in this purpose when they distract their students with courses focused on trivial subjects that have nothing to do with important works of the past. This is not to say that there’s no merit in studying current cultural practices or phenomena; but time in college is limited. It should be spent reading Tolstoy and Kant, not psychoanalyzing a musical from Bollywood...