Word: absurdity
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Carswell's further discussion of the O. A. is quite to the point--he himself realizes its superiority to any E., however A. His illustration includes one of the key "Wake Up the Grader" phrases--"It is absurd." What force! What gall! What fun! "Ridiculous," "hopeless," "nonsense," on the one hand; "doubtless," "obvious," "unquestionable" on the other, will have the same effect. A hint of nostalgic, anti-academic languor at this stage as well may well match the grader's own mood. "It seems more than obvious to one entangled in the petty quibbles of contemporary Medievalists--at times, indeed...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumption comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing him but like this: “It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
These are completely absurd realities. And so are the ones in which we find ourselves at Harvard. I’ve spent the past year writing a hundred-page thesis on Heidegger and architectural theory which is, in reality, nothing greater than my grandmother’s own diversions...
...take a look around this place you begin to realize how absurd many things are. Sir, you aren’t old enough to buy a drink; why are you starting a hedge fund? I receive e-mails over lists all the time in which the authors have signatures that are more than five lines long, listing a cell phone number in Barcelona, Shanghai, and Cambridge and, as if anyone else cares, the fact that they are an “A.B. Degree Candidate in History and Literature...
What I’ve realized, though, is that thinking about how absurd these realities might sound shouldn’t spoil them for you, and shouldn’t spoil them for anyone else. For some reason, my dad picks out stupid comedies, my grandmother still watches “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and Harvard is full of a bunch of delusional wannabe 30-year-olds. A lot of the things we do are actually pretty stupid and pretty comedic, but only if we think about them...