Word: useless
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...ultimate objective is to learn enough about human heredity to enable us to control and limit the production of inferior and useless organisms...
...leaving his son financially independent, R.L.S. had acquired another intrusive minder, his wife Fanny Osbourne. Biographer McLynn clearly despises Fanny and her extensive family-which, at the time R.L.S. met her, included Belle, a spoiled 18-year-old daughter; Lloyd, a rotten 11-year-old son; and a useless, not-quite-divorced husband. Not all biographers have seen things this way, as McLynn admits, but he is persuasive. Fanny was 40 when they met, 10 years older than R.L.S., an artistic poseur given to spiritualism and hypochondria who tried to cut Stevenson off from his wide circle of literary friends...
...copy of Windows, it has enslaved a goodly portion of the American population. Cohen's admission may have lacked the wattage of Oprah's confession to past cocaine abuse but not the poignancy: responsible, respected writer shamefully neglects most everything-family, work, leisure-in endless pursuit of the perfectly useless perfect hand. Heartbreaking...
...have had intermittent success applying the technique to my most chronic addiction: chess. George Steiner is right that chess is ultimately an entirely useless, self-referential experience, but telling yourself so is of no use because it is also totally absorbing. During, say, a 10-hour binge of speed chess, you tell yourself other things. You tell yourself it is a noble game. You tell yourself it was Ben Franklin's favorite pastime while ambassador to France ("I call this my opera," he would say, explaining his absence from the Paris opera). You tell yourself that Natan Sharansky kept...
Most U.S. allies regard the embargo as a useless obsession that has failed to bring Castro down for three decades. Last October the U.N. General Assembly recommended an end to the embargo by a vote of 101 to 2; only Israel joined the U.S. in saying no. ``Why should the U.S. maintain economic sanctions against Castro if it is willing to trade with Hanoi and Beijing?'' asks a European diplomat. A senior Clinton official can only reply, ``History matters.'' The Administration, he says, ``probably wouldn't seek to create an embargo if it didn't already exist. But there...