Word: useless
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Resuscitator, or HLR, which doctors have dubbed "the Thumper," works on the twin principles that a person whose heart stops must have both his breathing and his circulation restored. Most older methods of resuscitation, such as medieval flagellation or jackknifing the victim over a fence, have been barbarous and useless. Others have been of limited value because they concentrated on only one phase of the problem: breathing. Even the best of these methods, mouth-to-mouth breathing, went out of fashion in the Victorian era because it seemed not quite nice, and it took U.S. doctors years to restore...
...Enough? Unfortunately, even the best battered-child laws are useless if doctors' reports are not effectively followed up. The American Humane Association's Vincent De Francis thus questions the idea of reporting to the police. "This means viewing the case in terms of possible prosecution of the parent," says De Francis. But parental guilt is often impossible to prove, and the very threat of punishment may deter parents from getting medical help. As Mrs. DeHinger puts it: "The Children's Bureau does not want to put brutal parents in jail so much as to save the child...
...these bald philosophic propositions are the weakest part of a suspenseful and moving script. Of course it's redundant for the man to say "It's useless," or "Even a monkey could be trained to do this" when he's digging in a hole as dismal as that one; but after sand, struggle and serendipity, when life gets reduced to ciggs, sake, and sex, the sensations are powerfully communicated to the audience: you taste that drag, you smell that swig, you ... like the feelies in Brave New World...
...Welch's view, the 42-million-plus who cast ballots for Lyndon Johnson "actually voted, of course, for repeal of the Declaration of Independence," for "scrapping the U.S. Constitution entirely as an absurd and useless antique," for "completely disarming the U.S., for doing away with our Army, Navy and Air Force," for continuing programs that will "wipe out the value of all their savings, their life insurance policies, their bonds and mortgages, and will redistribute wealth from the industrious and frugal into the hands of the shiftless," and for "more riots to be instigated by racial agitators, for more...
...Fondling Pieces." Naturally, a plethora of stereotyped gifts is available: pen sets, leather-tooled engagement calendars, letter openers, diaries, rulers, cigarette lighters and ashtrays. San Francisco's Gump's is doing a big corporate business in "fondling pieces," otherwise useless hunks of jade that come in a suede pouch (price: $8.25). This year executives can also give and get desk-scale Rolls-Royce radiators, fused into everything from paperweights to cigar lighters to book ends...