Word: trivializing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...relatively trivial matter triggered the massive walkout. This spring Local 1759 of the United Mine Workers wanted an office that was not covered by their contract advertised so it could be filled by a union applicant. After management disagreed, an arbitrator was brought in and eventually ruled against the union. The angry miners first tried to reverse that ruling in federal court. When the court delayed, they protested with their only remaining weapon-an illegal wildcat...
Long Odds. Such apparent inconsistencies are trivial when compared with the slipshod logic of one of Temple's major premises. He invokes the belief of such sympathetic star trackers as Astronomer Carl Sagan and Astro physicist I.S. Shklovski'ï that intelligent life probably exists elsewhere in our galaxy. Out of billions of planets, so the argument goes, statistical probability dic tates that there must be some that have evolved like earth. But Temple seems confused about probability. "The odds against life occurring fairly frequently within our galaxy are impossible ones," he writes. In fact, odds must be long...
...cases a year. Most are for violations of the code in dealing with absurdly picayune incidents, such as a cadet's lying about having shined his shoes. When he was Secretary of the Army, Howard ("Bo") Callaway complained, "The honor code often deals with trivia." No matter: the trivial could get a cadet "separated"-expelled-as surely and swiftly as the significant...
...written a book on them. Bruch has developed a psychological composite portrait of the typical anorexic victim: they were, she says, model children who behaved with robot-like obedience because they doubted their abilities to stand up for and assert themselves. Their dieting usually began inexplicably, following trivial remarks about their appearance or upon a change of environment, like going to camp or college. In new situations, the anorexic feels embarassed about being chubby or not athletic enough, and begins dieting...
Occasionally a headman comes along who is adept at manipulating these conflicting forces. The trick is to utilize the threat of external power, which cannot really be mobilized by a humble village headman, to bring about his own ends within the longhouse. By failing to perform one of his trivial administrative functions, such as signing an application for a national registration card without which a man cannot get a job in a lumber camp, he can harass his opponents. Over matters of importance such as a land dispute, he may hold the entire house to ransom, if he is careful...