If our own dreams are small and self-centered, we can hardly blame inventors for producing trifles.

WSJ: Why Modern Innovation Traffics in Trifles

President Franklin Roosevelt and his advisers emerge remarkably badly on this issue, seemingly determined not to bother Stalin with such trifles.

ECONOMIST: Americans in the Gulag

Brussels has got around such trifles as negative opinion polls and even lost referendums: witness the unwanted EU constitution, now cross-dressed as the somewhat-less-awful Lisbon treaty.

ECONOMIST: The worrying European elections

It may be that Britain's wise politicians have solved all the big political and economic questions, leaving a largely contented population to amuse themselves with trifles.

ECONOMIST: Bagehot

Mr Rozar never did anything illegal, as far as is known, but he showed what could be done with the Net: how unconsidered trifles could be turned into a valuable dossier.

ECONOMIST: Rick Rozar

And, as Dr. Kissinger surmises, it has also created new incentives for nuclear proliferation by establishing that nobody trifles with those who have such weapons (or are about to get them).

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Snakes in the grass

Because geo-engineering is a new field, the researchers chose to ignore trifles such as cost or practicality, and focused instead on the sheer physical limits on what can be done and how much good the different schemes would do.

ECONOMIST: Geo-engineering

Annette's career fell into decline, alas, as relatively innocent trifles such as "Beach Blanket Bingo" were edged out of theaters by the likes of "The Graduate" and "Easy Rider, " as the much-sought "youth audience" started demanding less homogenized and more realistic depictions of teen and twenty-something life in feature films.

CNN: Annette Funicello was my dream crush