Word: worthlessness
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...Well known for his work on the physiological effects experienced by practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, he has recently reviewed studies of patients suffering from angina, a severe chest pain related to heart disease. He found that when physicians were initially enthusiastic about a remedy, even if it later proved worthless by ordinary medical definition, it acted as a placebo in about 80% of all cases. Conversely, Benson says, flaws in the patient-doctor relationship may account for some of the equally puzzling unpleasant effects, including nausea, dizziness and pain itself, experienced by some people who have taken placebos...
...always found a use for new lands, however hostile. A century before Apollo, Secretary of State William Seward was being castigated for wasting $7.2 million to buy a worthless, frozen wilderness. Today, most Americans would consider Alaska quite a bargain, at 2? an acre...
Admittedly, this is not a complete exposition of Lamont's argument. But that argument seems inherently worthless because it is not, as touted, "first hand" but secondhand, the result of "more than 650 interviews." Throughout, Lamont comes across as an interloper, a strange wanderer on the outside looking in. The punch line goes, "I was there--I know." Well, Lamont wasn't there, and it results in some embarassing misperceptions. Lamont repeatedly yaps about the "crush in the libraries." What "crush"? The only crush I've ever seen at Harvard is in Q-world's pinball arcade during reading period...
...pointless. The Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia once found themselves with an embarrassment of leisure. Their yams came up so abundantly that they had no need to work for their food. To occupy their excesses of spare time, the islanders devised the Kula, a ceremonial maritime exchange of economically worthless objects- red shell necklaces and white shell bracelets. The Kula, in formal circuit around the islands, was the vacation and vocation of the people. They became their own quaintness, their own tourist trap. It is possible, in the end, that they even took American Express...
...year when past and present began to clash in Oman. Rebel groups had already mounted an insurrection to overthrow Sultan Said bin Taimur, then 56, a paranoid tyrant who hoarded gold from oil revenues in the cellar of his ancient castle in Salalah because he believed paper currency was worthless. Under his medieval rule, slavery was sanctioned, and no one could travel abroad without his permission. It was against the law for an Omani to wear spectacles or ride a bicycle. In the whole country there were only two post offices, three miles of asphalt road, one 16-bed hospital...