Word: uselessness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...revolution at the same time they're teaching you how to use chopsticks. This scenario, alas, was not covered in the slim white protocol books given to the Soviet entourage and the 80 or so reporters who accompanied Gorbachev from Moscow. What the book did cover often proved useless. Gorbachev did not "arrive by car" at Tiananmen Square nor, accompanied by two soldiers of the Chinese honor guard, did "the distinguished guest" lay a wreath at the Monument to the People's Heroes. And what about that passage on proper behavior at the Beijing Opera? Mikhail and Raisa never enjoyed...
Telescam groups in several states employ a "grand prize" hook to sell useless water purifiers. Supposed prizewinners, who are advised by mail to call an 800 number for information, are told they will collect such awards as a diamond watch, mink coat and luxury car if they buy a $398 system that removes pollutants from drinking water. Consumers who buy the product receive a worthless contraption containing two small charcoal tablets. Worse, the prize never shows...
...intense characterization seems useless when Clara admits that she loves the au pair girl and desperately tries to keep her from returning to Vienna. This unexpected twist is completely alien to the character that Bellow so meticulously created. Nothing earlier in the book prepares the reader for such an incongruous revelation. It appears to come from nowhere and undermine any sense of Clara's character which Bellow may have created...
...Bellow had expanded A Theft to a full-length novel, he could have developed all these interesting characters and fully organized the scattered plot. On the other hand, he could have easily condensed the book into an effective short story, focusing on Clara and eliminating useless characters and anecdotes...
...complicate matters, between the segments of DNA that represent genes are endless stretches of code letters that seem to spell out only genetic gibberish. Geneticists once thought most of the unintelligible stuff was "junk DNA" -- useless sequences of code letters that accidentally developed during evolution and were not discarded. That concept has changed. "My feeling is there's a lot of very useful information buried in the sequence," says Nobel laureate Paul Berg of Stanford University. "Some of it we will know how to interpret; some we know is going to be gibberish...