Word: uselessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Side, ignited accidentally by a homeowner who used a blowtorch to defrost his frozen plumbing, ultimately destroyed 15 houses. The fire department had to cope with frozen hydrants and bursting hoses as well as the wind-whipped fires. Retreating from a flaming house, one dispirited fireman kicked at a useless ice-filled hose. "We lost it," he growled. "We're frozen...
Public life nearly ground to a standstill in Mississippi. The main reasons: treacherously icy roads and power outages. In Alabama, 46 National Guard armories served as shelters for the thousands whose heaters were useless in the widespread blackout, and Guardsmen carted generators to remote towns. Birmingham residents were shocked enough by the -2° cold, but then the weather became positively weird: multicolored lightning flashed in the night sky. Weathermen speculated that the colors resulted from light-refracting ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Alabama Governor Fob James proclaimed a state of emergency and, in a televised address, chastened...
...doing one's own thing, and familismo, or pulling back into family togetherness. Such universal disengagement does not shatter the nation. Instead, it keeps Italy functioning remarkably well. Explains Author Italo Calvino: "Italians know that they can count only on their own individual strength, that it is useless to expect anything from an authority whose institutions do not function...
Oscar Handlin, Adams University Professor, advocated U.S. intervention in countries threatened by communism and described citizen action against nuclear war as "useless and illusionary" at a Cambridge Forum last night...
Elsewhere, Lurie detects a curious connection between the two most publicized American styles, preppie and punk. In their Brooks Bros, and L.L. Bean gear, preppies favor useless buckles on loafers, buttons on Oxford-cloth collars, straps on raincoats and safety pins on kilted skirts. These fastenings strike the author as powerful agents of emotional restraint. Punkers, on the other hand, leave zippers sagging, shirts unbuttoned and wear safety pins through their cheeks as though the flesh itself is literally exploding with rage. The styles may be disparate, Lurie concludes, but "both graphically convey the sense of a world...