Word: useless
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Paul has streamlined many of the baroque papal ceremonies and abolished the archaic privileges of Rome's Black Nobility. He has not only internationalized the Curia but also has brought about the most sweeping reform in that musty bureaucracy since 1588, by abolishing a number of useless offices, limiting appointments to five-year terms and providing the church with a kind of executive prime minister in the form of the Vatican's Secretary of State...
...What happens to him in the process shouldn't happen to a golf ball. His nerve synapses collapse at the thought of the next day's match. His mind invents a nightmarish fantasy in which a team of inept Japanese admirals, located somewhere in his brain, shout useless instructions through the imaginary voice tubes of his creaking body machinery in an effort to help him hit the ball correctly...
Second, we must learn more about the effects of automation on the American people--on their job security and their leisure. And we must plan--so that automation does not turn us into useless appendages of our technology...
Apollo's temporary silence was easily explained. As the cone-shaped spacecraft hit the ocean, it was capsized by a combination of gusty winds and choppy waves. With the capsule in a nose-down position, its submerged antennas were useless. But the astronauts, trained for such contingencies, had to inflate three flotation bags attached to Apollo's nose. As the bags became buoyant, they swung the nose toward the surface until the spacecraft flipped upright, exposing the antennas and allowing radio transmissions to be resumed...
...member Modern Language Association, to which most college and university professors of literature belong. Wilson argues that one of the M.L.A.'s most ambitious enterprises, definitive editions of major 19th century American writers, is so riddled with pedantry that the 258-volume series will be virtually useless. Reviewing one of the volumes already published, William Dean Howells' Their Wedding Journey (Indiana University; $10), Wilson dismisses the project as "a waste of time and money." He claims that its high price tag and its elaborate textual commentary will mean that only Ph.D. candidates are likely to buy it, while...