As we pulled into Victoria station, a boy of about 10, encouraged by his own father, approached mine and asked, with great solemnity, "Did you fight in the war?" Realising the boy meant the second world war, my father – born six months after Hitler invaded Poland – frowned and gave a stern, single-syllable answer: "No".
Housing economics is still awaiting its Modigliani-Miller, its Black-Scholes, and so forth.The questions that the Stern Report attempts to answer about future utility and so forth are essentially insoluble; given the number of variables and intangibles, it's hard to see how they could be much better than random.
Senators John Thune and Jerry Moran sent Yahoo a stern letter earlier this month demanding answers about the company's response to the breaches after Yahoo canceled a scheduled briefing with staff from the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
"Next question, man," Martin answered with a stern look.
I gave her my best stern gimlet stare and said, in answer to her question, "More or less".
Stern but obviously perturbed, Mr. Immitt answered no to each question.
He was a traditional husband (his devoted wife, Emily, eventually collapsed beneath the burden of answering his correspondence), a stern father, a patriot and a devoted royalist.
"Gut ache" is how the playwright Harold Pinter described Beckett's message: "A major irritation, a most stern and ruthless activity without question or answer, a three-card trick, a necessity.
I hit him back three minutes later and he, with good reason, answered the phone with a stern "Yeah".
