Traumatic events, such as the suicide of the boy's father, are glossed over and then revisited, without ever being given depth or shape.
That said, there is a case for taking all policymakers out of the list, so here is the top 15 revisited without any serving central bankers or former central-bank governors.
Thankfully, most problems are dealt with in procès-verbal, a way to introduce technical corrections to treaties without revisiting negotiations.
We make poor use of judicial resources when, as here, we take a case merely to reaffirm (without revisiting) settled law.
He cannot speak Japanese very well; he has not expressed any particular admiration for Japan or its culture; and he set his first two novels in Japan without revisiting the country.
David McIntosh, a co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society, said he suspected that Mr. Obama just meant he wanted the court "to uphold the health care bill" without revisiting any of its earlier liberal rulings.
Instead, we respond to the inherent uncertainties of data by adding more data without revisiting our assumptions, creating an impression of certainty that can be lulling, misleading and often dangerous.
Diplomatic squabbles over the extent of cuts and funding for adaptation in the developing world are likely to be big enough stumbling blocks on their own at Copenhagen without revisiting the science.
No judicial roundup of the year would be complete without revisiting the florist Stamos Arakas, who was sued in October for $400,000 by a client who claimed that he had bungled the hydrangeas at her wedding.
"We cannot talk about this without revisiting the history and the heritage that we took over, which was three decades of total neglect of public service," said Nesreen M. Siddeek Berwari, the Iraqi minister of municipalities and public works.
