Word: meaningless
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When people meet each other for the first or second time, there is a sort of architecture in their talk. People are tentative at first. There's a certain kind of greeting formula that takes place as things develop. People become aware of things in common. Sometimes it's meaningless, like they both spent a week in the Ukraine, or neither of them has ever seen a football game. But it establishes, even speciously, common ground. And then after that what happens is that certain roles are assumed. Sometimes it turns out that one person is seeking advice, sometimes...
...came in excited and out of breath.” Sosa’s only exhibition of sincere sorrow comes when Valentina’s head is shot off during one confrontation. It is surprisingly easy to sympathize with the narrator; his offhand treatment of death renders the murders meaningless, and his intimate loneliness—as a man who relies on snakes for warmth—is more pitiful than disturbing. By comparison, the version of the crimes given by the media and the police seems like a bumbling, confused mess of tenuous hypotheses. Their powerlessness to keep...
...third effort, “Romance is Boring,” is a bleaker, angrier record is no small statement. The transformation in emotional tone is partially rooted in the lyrics, which retain their visceral but heartfelt quality within an expanding thematic range. Encompassing anorexia, losing parents, meaningless sex, abuse, and loss of faith, as well as more well-trodden romantic territory, the topics at hand are far from cheerful. More than anything, though, the tonal shift comes down to the band further shedding their twee image for a noise-influenced, experimental, nearly anarchic sound foretold by guest appearances...
...exploiting a single vulnerability. Tracking down the source of cybersabotage, routed like a skipping stone through a series of innocent servers, can be all but impossible. Are the attackers curious teenagers, criminal gangs, a foreign power - or, more likely, a criminal gang sponsored by a foreign power? Deterrence becomes meaningless when the identity of an attacker is unknown. (See an invasion of Chinese cyberspies...
...wheelchairs. Politicians back in the U.S. like to point to these projects as examples of taxpayer dollars being put to good use, and often cite the exponential number of girls in schools, some 2 million today compared to zero in 2001, as proof of success. But those schools are meaningless if there are no good teachers. In many rural parts of the country, teachers, if they can be found, often have a reading level only a few years beyond that of their students. That's not enough to build a functioning economy, a civil sector or a stable government...