Word: uselessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...much of a moderating influence on the President. Meese, however, cannot separate himself that neatly from another instance of Carter White House information reaching the Reagan election staff. Richard Allen, Reagan's former National Security Adviser, has admitted receiving on three occasions what he calls "innocuous, trite, useless, nonsubstantive, nonclassified and unsolicited material" from Carter's National Security Council. At the time, Allen reported directly to Meese. Allen gave the name of his NSC source to a House subcommittee headed by Democrat Donald Albosta, which is probing the affair, but he refused to divulge it publicly...
Under questioning from the Senators, Shultz made it clear that the low-decibel rhetoric did not augur an imminent Reagan-Andropov summit. He reiterated Reagan's contention that such a meeting would be useless unless there was a probability of "some significant outcome." The U.S. must play hard to get. "The minute you see another guy really wants any agreement," he said...
...this instance, the issue did not involve research directly; the bill was aimed at nuclear power plants. But a significant portion of bio medical research is used to generate such waste. The bill actually exempts such research, but universities insist that provision is useless. If all other waste disposal is curbed, then universities would have to establish their own facilities--a fiscally infeasible proposition, they say. "If we are deprived of a place to dump we could see large cutbacks in research," says Jacob Shapiro, radiological health and safety engineer to the University Health Services, and a nationally known expert...
...struggle for power, while the echo of the shots fired beside the Wannsee still rings in our ears ... But it was not until the hundredth anniversary of Kleist's death, on November 21, 1911, that the family overcame its sense of shame over this 'useless member of society, unworthy of any sympathy.' On that occasion they laid a wreath on his grave. The inscription on the ribbon read: 'To the best of his line...
Poker playing is an utterly useless and gratifyingly antisocial activity, frequently mistaken for gambling. It is, of course, a game of skill, but not many people understand the nature of this skill, and fewer have seen it in action at the level of world-class play. High-stakes poker is secretive; it is illegal in most places, and embarrassing both to losers, whose associates tend to fret, and to winners, who dread the taxman. Thus the English writer and poker player A. Alvarez (author of another examination of self-destruction, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide) was beguiled when...