On a lark, Mr. Minsky spent some time "inventing useless things, " he says, such as a "gravity machine, " a device that would ring a bell if the force of gravity changed.

WSJ: Looking for Something Useful to Do With Your Time? Don't Try This

Suppose you are like me, and once you fire up your laptop to check your email, you are in danger of spending the whole morning on the Net, doing increasingly useless things.

WSJ: How to Be a Better Procrastinator

Typically this meant plowing money into commodities, land, and other scarce if useless things (such as fine art), on the assumption that investment vehicles definitively limited in supply would hold their value in the context of dollar weakness.

FORBES: Now We Know Where the Inflation Went

In an utterly useless stab at playing characters, they say "quirky" things and talk to each other about the importance of having a family.

CNN: 'Lethal Weapon 4': Saying nothing, but loudly

"I've included all sorts of little things - his Vickers machine gun, bombed and rendered useless, but the man, the spirit of the man survives, " said Mr Doubleday.

BBC: WWI hero Herbert Columbine honoured with bronze statue

As things stand, the U.S. data are next to useless, since it takes several minutes to have other secret signals extracted prior to reaching Japanese forces, according to defense analyst Okabe.

FORBES: Magazine Article

"If Bill de Blasio spent more time reading The Wall Street Journal and less time writing us useless letters, he would know that the City is not even considering doing the things he urges us not to do, " mayoral spokeswoman Julie Wood said in an email.

WSJ: Privatizing New York City Parking Meters: DeBlasio Critical of Plan

One would think that Speaker Boehner and his staff would have had more important things to do on this particular Sunday morning than wasting time engaging in a useless school yard fight.

FORBES: The United States Congress-A Confederacy of Losers

But Dr Shogren's thesis was that wimpy, useless hunters were the ones who stayed at home and crafted objects, while the real men went out and killed things.

ECONOMIST: Palaeoeconomics