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. . . TREACHERY see: "DECEPTION" see "IMMORALITY" for other related links The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. --Edmund Burke (17291797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. Speech at County Meeting of Buckinghamshire [1784]. Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools that have not the wits enought to be honest. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. Tricks and treachery are merely proof of lack of skill. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Maxims_ [1678], Maxim 126 You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. In a speech in Clinton, Illinois [8 September 1858]. ----- perfidy (noun) Deliberate treachery or deceit (literary)  . . see: "DECEPTION" see "EVIL" for other related links I consider your crime worse than murder...I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A- Bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one can say that we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your treachery all around us every day for the civilian defense activities throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack. --Judge Irving R. Kaufman (1910-1992) sentencing the Rosenbergs to death for espionage [5 April 1951]. ----- quisling (noun) ['kwiz-ling] A traitor who turns against his or her own country to serve an invader. Etymology: The eponym of Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), head of Norway's government during the Nazi occupation of World War II.  TREATIES . . see "WAR & PEACE" for related links Fifty-Four Forty or Fight! --Senator William Allen [1844] in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 624. Cohan & Major explain: War-cry of Americans who wanted the entire Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest, disputed between the United States and Britain. Its notional northern boundary was latitude 54 degrees 40 minutes north, but in 1846 the US accepted the compromise boundary of the 49th parallel, already established as the frontier between the United States and Canada by an Anglo-American treaty of 1818. The draft of the constitution of a European family within the orbit of the League of Nations ... the beginning of a magnificent work, the renewal of Europe. --Aristide Briand (18621932) French statesman and winner of Nobel Peace Prize in 1926. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 811. Cohan & Major explain: The [Locarno] treaties [October 1925], signed by Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany, guaranteed Germany's frontiers with France, Belgium and Holland and were intended to remove the potential causes of a Franco-German war. They were followed by Germany's admittance to the League in 1926. Locarno did not address the question of Germany's other borders, with Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. For major military liabilities, such as might arise under the Covenant of the League of Nations or the Treaty of Locarno, we are but ill-prepared ... We alone among the Great Powers ... have neglected our defences to the point of taking serious risks. --British army chief of staff, annual review, 1932. The most stupendous and most revolutionary change that has ever taken place at any time in the history of the world. (Of the utterly useless Kellogg-Briand Pact.) --Nicholas Murray Butler (18621947) President of Columbia University. - There is a cheerful-looking bust of Jefferson in the Cabildo in New Orleans, where the territorial transfer was signed. It ought to bear the inscription, "Thomas Jefferson chuckled here." For although a President cannot conclude a treaty with a foreign nation without the "advice and consent of the Senate," Jefferson had advised and consented with nobody. He never mentioned a word of the Louisiana Purchase to Congress until it was settled. [ . . . ] Of course it was unconstitutional. It was outrageous. But, in the end, even a majority of Jefferson's enemies accepted it for the most reliable of American reasons: it worked. Jefferson had more than doubled the existing territory of the United States (a one hundred and forty percent increase, to be exact). And for four cents an acre! --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce. --Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. - You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power; all the same in the end if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors. --David Lloyd George (18631945) Welsh-born British Prime Minister [19161922]. "Fontainebleau Memorandum" In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 801. Cohan & Major explain: The memorandum. which proposed that Germany lose less territory than was demanded by the French and in particular that Germany retain a demilitarized Rhineland infuriated the French, who saw it as a volte-face. & see The worst act of world piracy ever committed under the flag of hypocrisy. --Max Warburg (1867-1946) German banker. (On the treaty terms, May 1919.) & see This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years. --Marshall Ferdinand Foch (18511929) French general in WW I. (On the treaty terms, May 1919), in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 802. Cohan & Major add: Foch, who boycotted the signing ceremony, told the New York Times: 'The next time, remember, the Germans will make no mistake. They will break through into northern France and seize the Channel ports as a base of operations against England .' & see: [Reparations] created resentment, suspicion and international hostility. More than anything else, they cleared the way for the Second World War. --A.J.P. Taylor (19061990) British historian. _The Origins of-the Second World War_ [1961] p.71. - ... [prohibiting] the launching of projectiles and explosives from balloons, or by other new methods of a similar nature. --at the first Hague Convention [1899] The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. --Opening words of Article 5, North Atlantic Treaty, signed on 4 April 1949. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 878. Cohan & Major note: The Berlin blockade gave a decisive impetus to the formation of a western alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was set up to defend its members Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States against a potential attack by the Soviet Union. - ...Over the course of the succeeding decades, as the laws of war or, as they came to be known, international humanitarian law evolved and expanded, the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] became the legally recognized guardian of these regulations. And yet, the paradox of the success of the Red Cross movement, the advance of international law, and, after World War II, the worldwide diffusion of the concept of human rights and new authority for it, is that all these developments coincide not with a new era in which Kant's perpetual peace was ushered in, but rather with the hideous course of the twentieth century itself. No century has had better norms and worse realities. In the period from the signing of the first Geneva Convention and the subsequent conferences of 1899 and 1907 in The Hague, to the outbreak of World War I, the rights of individuals in wartime were expanded, "aggressive force" was outlawed, and protections for civilians were expanded. Then came the mass slaughter in the trenches of World War I and the Armenian genocide to make a mockery of all that. In the aftermath of that war, in a Europe shocked by the toll exacted by gas attacks, another Hague conference outlawed the use of poison gas and other forms of chemical and biological warfare. Three years later, the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war itself. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first allow to set international legal norms. Nine years later, the Japanese army was murdering Chinese civilians by the hundreds of thousands in Nanking. Four years after that, the Germans put in motion the Final Solution. Four years after that, twenty million Russians were dead and Europe was in ruins. --David Rieff, _A Bed For the Night, Humanitarianism In Crisis_ - A government treaty gave Cherokees their land as long as the grass grows and the water flows, but when they discovered oil, they took it back because there was nuthin' in the treaty about oil. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. In "Will Rogers U.S.A.," CBS-TV [9 March 1972]. Guarantees which are not worth the paper they are written on. --Johann Bernhard Graf von Rechberg und Rothenlφwen (18061899) Austrian statesman. In a dispatch concerning the recognition of Italy [1861]. The high contracting parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another. --Kellogg-Briand Pact, Article 1, signed in Paris [27 August 1928]. (The Pact had 64 signatures: Japan, Germany, Italy, and the USSR, to name four.) TOPICAL - ...The other defining feature of the Clinton foreign policy was multilateralism, which expressed itself in a mania for treaties. The Clinton administration negotiated a dizzying succession of parchment promises on bioweapons, chemical weapons, nuclear testing, carbon emissions, anti-ballistic missiles, etc. Why? No sentient being could believe that, say, the chemical or biological weapons treaties were anything more than transparently useless. Senator Joseph Biden once defended the Chemical Weapons Convention, which even its proponents admitted was unenforceable, on the grounds that it would "provide us with a valuable tool" the "moral suasion of the entire international community." Moral suasion? Was it moral suasion that made Qaddafi see the wisdom of giving up his weapons of mass destruction? Or Iran agree for the first time to spot nuclear inspections? It was the suasion of the bayonet. It was the ignominious fall of Saddam and the desire of interested spectators not to be next on the list. The whole point of this treaty was to keep rogue states from developing chemical weapons. Rogue states are, by definition, impervious to moral suasion. [...] Realism recognizes the fundamental fallacy in the whole idea of the international system being modeled on domestic society. First, what holds domestic society together is a supreme central authority wielding a monopoly of power and enforcing norms. In the international arena there is no such thing. Domestic society may look like a place of self-regulating norms, but if somebody breaks into your house, you call 911, and the police arrive with guns drawn. That's not exactly self-enforcement. That's law enforcement. Second, domestic society rests on the shared goodwill, civility and common values of its individual members. What values are shared by, say, Britain, Cuba, Yemen and Zimbabwe all nominal members of this fiction we call the "international community"? Of course, you can have smaller communities of shared interests NAFTA, ANZUS, or the European Union. But the European conceit that relations with all nations regardless of ideology, regardless of culture, regardless even of open hostility should be transacted on the EU model of suasion and norms and negotiations and solemn contractual agreements is an illusion. A fisheries treaty with Canada is something real. An Agreed Framework on plutonium processing with the likes of North Korea is not worth the paper it is written on. --Charles Krauthammer (1950 ) Columnist for the Washington Post who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. "Democratic Realism An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World," 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture, AEI Annual Dinner, (Washington) [10 February 2004] - ;void(0)) TREES . . see "NATURE" for related links Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats. --Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (1935 ) American actor, screenwriter, and director. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity...and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. --William Blake (17571827) English poet. "The Letters of William Blake" I planted four trees in the White House garden. I hope Reagan doesn't cut them down. --Jimmy Carter (1924 ) American Democratic statesman, President [19771981]. In Zbigniew Brzezinski _Power and Principle_ [1983]. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. --Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" [1923] Auntie, did you feel no pain Falling from that willow tree? Will you do it, please, again? 'Cuz my friend here did not see. --Harry Graham (18741936) British writer and journalist. _Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes_ [1899] A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. --Greek Proverb And why should men delay to plant and cultivate all sorts of good trees because they may not live to see them fully grown? When can a man do better on the face of the earth than to cultivate and beautify it? While ever ready to depart, the lover of beautiful trees should act as if he expected to live a thousand years.... --Ethan A. Greenwood, writing to _The New England Farmer_ [31 March 1832]; in Helen and Scott Nearing _The Maple Sugar Book_ [1950]. He who plants a tree looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. Nothing could be less selfish than this. --Washington Irving (17831859) American author, essayist, and travel book writer. A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes. --Henry James (18431916) American novelist. - In Louisiana, the live-oak is the king of the forest, and the magnolia is its queen; and there is nothing more delightful to one who is fond of the country than to sit under them on a clear, calm spring morning like this. --Joseph Jefferson (18291905) American actor. _The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson_ [1917 ed.] For cutting the shoots of trees in city parks that bear flowers or fruit or yield shade the fine shall be six pannas [copper or silver coins], for cutting small branches twelve pannas, for cutting stout branches twenty-four pannas, for destroying trunks the lowest fine for violence, for uprooting the tree the middle fine. --Kautilya (also called Canakya, or Visnugupta) (c.350c.275 BC) Hindu statesman and philosopher. _Arthasastra_ (Book of Statecraft), bk 3, ch. 19 - "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) American poet [Kilmer was killed in action during World War I.] (For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden) I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. & note: I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. --Ogden Nash (19021971) American writer of humorous poetry. "Song of the Open Road", _Happy Days_, [1933] - Our rocks are rough, but smiling there Th' acacia waves her yellow hair, Lonely and sweet, nor loved the less For flow'ring in a wilderness. --Thomas Moore (17791852) Irish poet, satirist, composer, and musician. _Lalla Rookh_ [1817] Woodman, spare that tree, Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now. --George Pope Morris (18021864) American poet. _Woodman, Spare That Tree_ [1830] (Note: The tree for which Morris pleaded stood just about where now is the crossing of 98th Street and West End Avenue in New York City.) The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. "A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray" [26 April 1946] Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a coolibar tree, And he sang as he sat and waited for his billy-boil, You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me. --Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (18641941) Australian author and poet "Waltzing Matilda" (Australia's National Song) A tree is a tree how many more do you need to look at? --Ronald Reagan (19112004) American President [19811989] and former Hollywood actor. Speech to the Western Wood Products Association opposing expansion of Redwood National Park [12 September 1965]. Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, To the silent wilderness. --Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822) English poet. The Redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are the ambassadors from another time. --John Ernst Steinbeck (19021968) American novelist. _Travels With Charley_ [1962] - Sequoia National Park is an unspoiled treasure of some of the most striking scenery in the world. From its towering giant sequoia trees and soaring mountain peaks to cascading creeks, flowering meadows and star studded evening skies, you will be inspired by this masterpiece of nature. --http://www.visitsequoia.com/ The General Sherman Tree, located in Sequoia National Park, is the largest living thing on Earth. It weighs approximately 2.7 million pounds, stands 274.9 feet tall and is believed to be around 2,100 years old. And, it's still growing --http://www.visitsequoia.com/ - ----- arborist (noun) A specialist in the care of woody plants, especially trees. Syn: tree surgeon copse [KOPS], noun: A thicket or grove of small trees. dendrochronology (noun) [den-droh-kruh-NAH-luh-gee] The study of past climate through the records stored in the rings of trees. ramose (adj.) Having many branches. Synonyms: branching, ramate wenge (noun) The dark brown wood of an African tree. Use: veneer for furniture. . . see "CRIME & PUNISHMENT" for related links Oaths are but words, and words but wind. --Samuel Butler (16121680) English poet and satirist. "Hudibras" [1663], pt. II [1664], canto II, l. 117 ^^ In a few rare instances, a trial can be sensational even without a jury. The clearest example comes from 1924, when Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold were tried in Chicago for the murder of Bobby Franks. This has been called "the crime of the century" (there are, of course, other candidates for this title). The two defendants were rich, young, brilliant, and Jewish; they killed young Franks, apparently, just for the thrill of it. For this reason, perhaps, their crime fascinated and horrified the country: it seemed to encapsulate some sort of twentieth-century malaise. Loeb and Leopold imagined that they could commit the perfect crime; but they were, in fact, blundering amateurs. They were caught fairly quickly; and they quickly confessed. The only issue to be decided, then, was their punishment: would they be hanged or not? Clarence Darrow argued for their defense; there was no jury, but the ladies and gentlemen of the press jammed the courtroom nonetheless. Darrow made an impassioned argument, insisting that the two young men were abnormal, emotionally immature, poisoned by reading too much Nietzsche, and the product of forces beyond their control. The judge did save them from the gallows, for whatever reason; he sentenced them to prison instead, to serve for the rest of their lives. It is unclear whether Darrow's eloquence made any difference. The judge stressed how young the defendants were; and Leopold himself (although he loved Darrow's speech) remarked that he found the whole psychiatric defense rather pointless: "We need only have introduced our birth certificates in evidence," and that would have been enough. Loeb died in prison; a vindictive fellow prisoner stabbed him to death in the shower. Leopold served until the brink of old age, was released, and died a few years later. --Lawrence M. Friedman (1930 ) _American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002] Ch. 4 "Crime and Punishment in the New Century" pp. 88-89 ^^ That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason. --Robert H. Jackson (18921954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice [19411954] Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Opening statement for the prosecution, International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg [21 November 1945]. ^ In keeping with an age of excess and short memories, the O. J. Simpson murder trial is called the Trial of the Century. It's a foolish label, but inevitable given the hunger of a mass media to hype the latest sensational newsbreak in order to attract higher ratings. Nor does the "Trial of the Century" superlative really fit, ignoring, as it does, others that transfixed the nation throughout the century. In 1906, the trial of Harry K. Thaw for the murder of the great architect Stanford White laid bare the private demimonde arena of immense wealth and hypocrisy that typified the Gilded Age. In 1914, as America was about to step fully onto the world stage with the outbreak of World War I, the trial of Leo Frank for the slaying of little Mary Phagan in Atlanta - "the American Dreyfus Case" triggered an outbreak of prejudice against Jews that led to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the rebirth of the murderous Ku Klux Klan. In 1921, the murder trial of the immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, "the poor fish peddler and the poor shoe cobbler," passionately divided Americans along class lines and sparked heated debates about the fairness of American justice. In 1925, the Scopes evolution trial exposed societal conflicts between science and religion, liberalism and conservatism, and pitted the agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow against the aging, dying fundamentalist orator William Jennings Bryan. In 1948, the Hiss case personified fears about communist subversion that marked the new Cold War era and elevated Richard Nixon into a figure whose actions would deeply affect national political life for the next three decades. In 1951, the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg fueled conspiracy theories about traitors within and provided a backdrop for an era of character assassination known as McCarthyism. Memorable as these are, they pale beside the first national media extravaganza to be called the Trial of the Century. That was the 1935 trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. --Haynes Johnson (1931 ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] O.J.'s [Simpson] trial went from being the most watched legal proceeding in U.S. history to the single event that received more coverage over a longer period of time than anything telecast before it. In its first year as a news story, O.J. attracted more TV coverage than the brutal war in Bosnia, more coverage than the election campaign for president of the United States, more coverage than a terrorist bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that took 168 lives. And O.J. received not just more coverage than any of those individual episodes; O.J. received more coverage than *all of them combined*. --Haynes Johnson (1931 ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] p. 148 - Not only did we play the race card, we played it from the bottom of the deck. --Robert Shapiro (1942 ) Ameican lawyer. (On the defense's conduct during the O.J. Simpson trial), interview [3 October 1995]. Asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable. --Hiller B. Zobel (1932 ) American judge. (On the jury system), "The Lawyer on Trial" in _American Heritage_ [July-August 1995]. . . see: "LIGHT-HEARTED" & "LIGHTEN UP" see: "OVER-REACTION" see: "TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY" You should never fret about trifles. --Jane Austen (17751817) English writer. _Northanger Abbey_ [1818] Learn to recognize the inconsequential, then ignore it. --H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940 ) American author. _Life's Little Instruction Book_ [1991], Maxim #178 One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: 'To rise above little things.' --John Burroughs (18371921) American naturalist and writer. Wink at small faults. --John Clarke (15961658) _Proverbs: English and Latine_ [1639] You know my method, Watson. It is founded on the observances of trifles. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) Scottish-born writer of detective fiction. _The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_ [1894] "The Crooked Man" Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. . Virtue # 11 (Tranquility) [1784] in _Autobiography_ [1798]. Make it your habit not to be critical about small things. --Edward Everett Hale (18221909) American clergyman, writer, and chaplain of the Senate. For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost. --George Herbert (15931633) English religious poet. _Comp. Outlandish Proverbs_, 499, [1640] Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Letter to Baretti [10 June 1761]. Do not let trifles disturb your tranquillity of mind. The little pinpricks of daily life when dwelt upon and magnified, may do great damage, but if ignored or dismissed from thought, will disappear from inanition. Most men have worried about things which never happened, and more men have been killed by worry than by hard work. Life is so great in its opportunities and possibilities, that you should rise confidently above the inevitable trifles incident to daily contact with the world. Life is too precious to be sacrificed for the nonessential and transient. Ignore the inconsequential. --Grenville Kleiser (18681953) American writer of humor and inspiration. Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace. --Judith "Miss Manners" Martin (1938) American newspaper columnist. Light minds are captivated by trifles. --Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso] (43 B.C.18 A.D.) Roman poet. "The Art of Love" tr. Peter Green [1982] Little things console us, because little things afflict us. --Blaise Pascal (16231662) French mathematician, physicist, and moralist. - At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offense. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _An Essay on Criticism_ [1711], pt. II, l. 186 What mighty contests rise from trivial things. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _The Rape of the Lock_ [1712] canto 1. l. 2 - ----- bagatelle (noun): 1. A trifle; a thing of little or no importance. 2. A short, light musical or literary piece. foofaraw [FOO-fuh-raw], noun: 1. Excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration. 2. A fuss over a matter of little importance. gewgaw [G(Y)OO-gaw], noun: A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble. Ex.: Walk into almost any department store, and there it is -- along with mounds of other gimmicky gadgets and garish gewgaws that (no offense, Vanna) the world can live without. --James A. Russell, "What the World Needs Now... Is Not Another Gimmicky Gadget or Worthless Doohickey," _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ [9 September 1995] nugatory [NOO-guh-tor-ee; NYOO-], (adj.) 1. Trifling; insignificant; inconsequential. 2. Having no force; inoperative; ineffectual. Ex.: Tygiel's forte as a historian is his eye for what may appear nugatory or marginal but, when focused upon, illuminates the temper of a given moment. --Roberto Gonzlez Echevarria, "From Ruth to Rotisserie," _New York Times_ [2 July 2000] peccadillo [peck-uh-DIL-oh], noun: A slight offense; a petty fault. pettifogger (noun) 1. A lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable. 2. One given to quibbling over trifles. picayune (adj.) 1. Trifling: of very little importance 2. Small-minded: tending to fuss about unimportant things and to be childishly spiteful . . see "KNOWLEDGE" for related links - My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. "You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it." "To forget it!" "You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) Scottish-born writer of detective fiction. _A Study in Scarlet_ [1888] - There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. - IN WHAT YEAR WAS THE...? end page | TABLOIDS - TALENT | TALK - TAYLOR (ELIZABETH) | TAXATION | TEACHERS / TEACHING | TEAMWORK - TELEVANGELISTS | TELEVISION - TELEVISION SHOWS | TEMPER - THANKSGIVING | THATCHER - THINKING | THOUGHT POLICE - THRIFT | TIME | TIME TRAVEL - TODAY | TOLERANCE - TOYS | TRADITION - TRANSIENCE | TRAVEL | TREACHERY - TRIVIA | TROUBLE - TRUST | TRUTH | TRYING - TYRANNY | | R | S | T | U - END | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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