Mr Porter, the Harvard strategy guru, thinks that GuideStar's figures are too superficial to be much use in judging, say, the performance of foundations.

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Her husband, David Alexander, mostly sticks to the "Masterpiece" series on PBS (though he quit "Downton Abbey" after one season because it was "too superficial").

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Too many have been content to make superficial layoffs to please Wall Street analysts, in the hope that they can avoid more painful changes.

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Thinking too much about a logical set of preferences, like superficial commonalities between people, can distort your ability to identify what has real meaning.

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