Word: trivializing
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Hypocrisy is among the most universal and well-studied of psychological phenomena, and the research suggests that Craig, Haggard and the others may be guilty not so much of moral hypocrisy as moral weakness. The distinction may sound trivial at first, but as a society, we tend to forgive the weak and shun the hypocritical. As psychologists Jamie Barden of Howard University, Derek Rucker of Northwestern and Richard Petty of Ohio State have shown, we often use a simple temporal cue to distinguish between the weak and the hypocritical: if you say one thing and then do another...
...mommy wars, of course. For starters, the stakes in the debate between stay-at-home mothers vs. working mothers are plainly, unequivocally serious, since that's a zero-sum game between maximum professional fulfillment and maximum parental availability. But there are serious and similar social crosscurrents underlying the apparently trivial issue of hair color as well, and the divide is of roughly the same scale. Three-quarters of women from 25 to 54 are in the labor force these days, twice as many as worked a half-century ago - which is why the decision to be a stay-at-home...
...single one has visible gray hair. Of the 70 female members of the House, only seven have gray hair. Political professionals say that the double standard is a great unspoken inequity but that candidates and officeholders don't dare publicly discuss it for fear of seeming trivial. In an interview before her death last year, Ann Richards, the famously white-haired former Governor of Texas, told me, "You can't appear to be too flashy because it will send the wrong message, but at the same time, you need to appear energetic. The issue is much more significant for women...
...chat some more about the Wynn, about travel, about trivial things. Then somehow I bring up cocoa and the impact of financialization on some of the soft-commodity markets, and she straightens up and squints down at me, launching into some quick attributes of cocoa to test my knowledge. Cocoa production is down because of drought in West Africa, and there is fear of renewed fighting in Ivory Coast, the world's largest producer. Meanwhile, Haugerud says, "demand continues to be strong across the board, along with new demand for dark chocolate because of the health benefits of flavanols. Dark...
...scandal is hardly trivial. If even one NBA ref, whose calls are often subjective and controversial, were shown to be tainted, it would strike at the very integrity of the game. When the NBA opens its season this fall and a referee blows a call, there will doubtless be more than one fan who will tap his buddy and say, "Hey, is that ref pulling a Donaghy?" But that's if fans even remember his name. The Donaghy scandal could grow; or, just as likely, it could sink into the oblivion of a slow summer news week - with baseball hitting...