Word: useless
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...restrain the kind of growth that exhausts resources and pollutes the environment. One problem is that there is no reliable indicator that measures and distinguishes between different kinds of growth. Economic performance is gauged by the gross national product, a truly gross and misleading measure. Activities that are useless (like the printing of reports that the recipients throw in the wastebasket without reading) or even destructive (the development of highly polluting production technologies) swell G.N.P. as long as money is spent on them. At best, G.N.P. tends to overemphasize the kind of growth symbolized by steel, stamping presses, cars...
...drawingroom setting borrowed from Chekhov, Shaw's delightful but useless creatures engage in some of the master's most lively and trenchant prose. Not hampered by the limited arena of action, they spend quite an action-packed three hours on the stage. Yet their witty opinions sometimes seem a substitute for more complete characterization, and the constant action sometimes seems effected by too improbably contrivances. Though the atmosphere is consistent, the politics of the play are occasionally confused. It is perhaps this mixture of virtue and vices that have caused critics to make diametrically different judgments upon Heartbreak House. While...
...smokes cigarettes (which seems to encompass her idea of emancipation). Astrov gives a stirring rendition of the weather report when Vanya interrupts his seduction of Irina--an example of the Chekhovian principle that the words we exchange in conversation don't mean a damn thing. And Vanya, the prototype useless intellectual, constantly brings a smile of recognition with his temper tantrums...
...McGovern delegates' reputation for intransigence, Elstein is no ideologue. "We want to win in November," he says. "All of our effort becomes useless if Nixon wins, so we've got to go to all possible sources of support-the labor unions, the regular organization." But he adds: "The thing that really gets us is that when we were elected, the regulars all over the country say they should get to go to Miami because they've served the party all these years. That's the problem. They haven't served the party. They spend...
...really bored and in a way I feel useless just sitting around." Pankhurst said. Southwick, while aware of the tedium problem, explained it as "a function of people not knowing how to relax." "Now that the Convention is underway, the tedium will diminish pretty rapidly," he said