Oak Ridge is the repository of the centrifuges, raw uranium and other nuclear equipment that the United States shipped out of Libya this year, in the most conspicuous success story yet of how to disarm a country without attacking it.
(The movement's most conspicuous success story of the moment is Greta Gerwig, whose methods in "Lady Bird," though not improvisational, embody the same sense of personal implication that energized her early performances in mumblecore films).
These conspicuous success stories are one of the main reasons Mr Osborne was able to declare in his speech that "in the Midlands, a new job is created every 10 minutes".
As he was allowed no redeeming features, and Hedren no conspicuous vices, the story's point seemed to be that physical ugliness begets moral ugliness.
It's striking, if conspicuous, standing a story higher than the row houses it used to be a part of, a dazzling white block with many windows, the architectural equivalent of the cousin who made good and returns to visit his working-class relations.
Texts, emails, recorded voices, Google, iPlayer are conspicuous in these stories – sometimes comically unhelpful, always distracting.
No, the film does not mention Porter's homosexuality, but the director, Michael Curtiz, creates what seems in retrospect a conscious, conspicuous gap in the story of Porter's marriage to Linda (Alexis Smith).
Virus metagenomics is a young research direction but can already boast several stories of conspicuous success in the discovery of novel groups of (putative) viruses with unexpected features.
This is, in other words, a story with a conspicuous lack of heroes.
