Word: useless
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...smiled at Stuart's editing. He had qualified a few generalizations, broken up long sentences, deleted the over-written phrases like "dastard." Lisa sat down to watch Heather go over the conclusion for the last time. By 11 she was on the last page, and Heather realized it was useless to try to revise anymore. Her synapses were misfiring. Her hands were shaking. The thesis was due in six hours, and the conclusion still had to be printed out, the bibliography written, and the whole thing copied and put in binders. She panicked...
...talking," says Shilah Johnson, a Los Angeles police officer who lectures on rape-defense techniques. "Say anything you like, but don't put him down." Some women have escaped rape by pleading that they are pregnant, menstruating or have a venereal disease. Other experts contend that talk is useless; Patsy Klaus, a researcher at the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice, believes "a sudden violent scream" is better. Tears, however, are likely to heighten a rapist's sadistic impulses. One possible deterrent is for the victim to try to disgust the attacker by putting a finger...
...flown B-52 support missions in his Phantom Interceptor off the carrier Bonhomme Richard; Ray--who is a doctor, a healer who sometimes cuts off the life support; Ray--who has seen too much useless death and too much useless life; Ray--who in his third decade is divorced and remarried to a woman who is perfect, except he hates her, except he loves another woman named Sister, except she is murdered on the verge of rock'n'roll stardom in a shack in Tuscaloosa; Ray--who steals a Learjet and crashes it into the Toronto woods; Ray, the unfaithful...
Kudlow, who will soon be named chief economist of the Office of Management and Budget, insists that traditional econometric models are useless now because they do not measure the explosion of work and savings that will occur when President Reagan cuts taxes. Said Kudlow: "We have a new set of ideas, and a traditional model would merely serve to mislead and confuse the American people...
While keeping tabs on Rohanda, Ambien II begins to believe that Canopus is far more advanced than Sirius. The Sirians are technological wizards, but every millennium or so they discover that their ever more sophisticated machines have rendered more people useless and unhappy. Ambien suspects that the Canopeans have achieved a wisdom that transcends this problem, and she initiates a friendship with Klorathy, a senior Canopean administrator, in the hope of prying his secrets away. The job is not easy. He has the habit of answering a question with another question. He is also given to interstellar bromides: "Everything...