Word: absurdity
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When Mr. Lowell introduced the tutorial system forty years ago, I feel certain he expected it to drive out the "course system." This has not occurred: indeed, exactly the opposite has taken place; new courses have proliferated to a degree that seems absurd. American professors, old and young, like to give courses (and so do I, I must admit). Few care to do tutorial work after the first dozen years. Since no other American college has adopted a tutorial system (to me a significant fact), experience in tutorial work is not considered useful as a preparation for employment elsewhere...
...performed his duties with gusto. His big study in Davis House was always crowded, but neither the babble nor the questions ever bothered him. Each night, "after the lights of the house were out, and the sheaf of absurd French exercises corrected and indignantly marked with red crayon," the boys in the rooms below would hear him begin his nightly pacing...
...searching for a substitute to take Kaufman's place, was turned down by Newsman John Daly ("I think Kaufman's dismissal was both unnecessary and absurd"), Comic Garry Moore ("Responsible people shouldn't give way to the small segment of the public who are all too anxious to hunt for things to condemn"), and Veteran Fred Allen, who snapped: "This thing is ridiculous. There are only two good wits on television, Groucho Marx and George S. Kaufman. With Kaufman gone, TV is half-witted." Finally, CBS found a substitute in Steve (Songs for Sale) Allen...
...colleges of the University of London sprawl across the face of London. Main highways and back alleys wind through its campus. Students of medicine and Marathi, English history and household work commute to classes. "Could anything be more absurd?" asked Educational Critic Abraham Flexner in his famed 1930 critique of American, English and German universities. "I confess myself unable to understand in what sense the University of London is a university...
...make the firmest anti-Communist admit to outlandish offenses. What still remains puzzling is why Communist trials, so carefully stage-managed as spectacles, can be so blatantly inept as to strain the credulity of a high-school boy. Did the Communists really expect the Czechoslovaks to believe the absurd conspiracies confessed so abjectly at the recent Slansky trial...