"It's extremely preoccupying that one of the first acts of the new Obama administration could be a measure that is clearly protectionist and a distortion of competition," said Anne-Marie Idrac, the French trade minister, who tried to draw Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, into the battle.
"The presence of fictional characters in your head, especially ones who talk, is extremely preoccupying," she said.
As far back as I remember, this was something that I was extremely preoccupied by.
Yet Mr Musk also said last week that the technology remains "extremely speculative", and he is too preoccupied with Tesla and SpaceX to go to work on the Hyperloop himself.
The timing of the shipment was extremely awkward, as the Ethiopian military was preoccupied with Somalia and also quietly cooperating with the United States.
And any author with such a long career that didn't repeat themselves in some way, from the minute arrangements of their syntax to the characters and grand themes that preoccupy them, would be an extremely unusual creature.
Anne-Maria Rothenstein, manager of corporate foreign exchange trading at the Midland Bank in New York, said dollar dealings were extremely quiet, "like a holiday". Traders, she said, were preoccupied with the possible outcome of the meeting of officials from Britain, France, Japan, the United States and West Germany.
One reason that the bond market ignored the trade and industrial figures, which would normally have been extremely bullish for fixed-income secuurities, was that investors were more preoccupied with the sharp decline in the dollar against the West German mark, which could discourage foreign investment in dollar-denominated securites.
Some Europeans complain that American policymakers, preoccupied by the Middle East, take a cavalier approach to some extremely sensitive issues, such as Turkish membership of the European Union.
"Bachelor" Twitter, which is both a loving and spiteful place, was mostly preoccupied with the fact that Colton did not yet run away from the show and jump over an extremely tall fence, a moment that was teased in the first episode that the show has yet to deliver.
Alas, ministers are preoccupied.
