As CNET's Rafe Needleman observed, Ting is striving to be "less evil" than the competition – a mission that, in today's market, is an utter no-brainer.
Zimmerman added, "I know that there will be a few selectors who will utter no word for or against him but will withhold their vote as a payback".
To the amazement of the old-timers, a strong friendship grew up between him and Bill, who was a Tammany Democrat and an utter reactionary; no one was ever able to figure out the basis of the friendship.
Yet, without the doomy context of what we know about, say, the Vietnam War, they don't often capture the smell, taste, feel, boredom and sense of utter, no-way-to-get-out desolation.
"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women," begins Laura Bates's Girl Up, "there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex".
No matter where you're from, you deserve to depart a party after having uttered no more than six words.
Holm closed with a quote from Jamie Foxx that had nothing to do with the speech, followed by one of the most accurate lines a commencement speaker ever uttered: "No matter what you say, if you say it slowly, in a cool robe, it will sound more smarter".
But I knew I had made it when, struggling to keep the yacht upright in a force 8 gale, I uttered no more than the mildest of sailor's curses as a freezing wave crashed over the bow and into my face.
But to paraphrase a line Muhammad Ali apparently never actually uttered, no Welshman ever called me convict.
No hard feelings are risked, no feathers of audience sensitivity are ruffled, and as a result no memorable lines are uttered, no startling scenes unfold, and no character emerges toward whom you feel anything more than tepid good will.
