"This whole initiative is based on a nonproblem," he said.

And that I sincerely believe this will be a nonproblem.

Some critics might claim that we are seeking to solve a nonproblem.

Spending $1.5 million to accomplish a solution to a nonproblem is ludicrous.

Instead, Hutchison's solution to the nonproblem passed 99-0 in the Senate.

It is a nonproblem and a false problem."

For the time being,Glennys Jones had been dismissed as too little to matter, a nonproblem.

It turned an irritating chore into a nonproblem.

Which made yesterday's departure delay a nonproblem.

Unquestionably, passing a law to address this nonproblem is preferable to rewriting the Constitution.

"On the other hand, we shouldn't do everything, either; we don't want to squander resources on something that might turn out to be a nonproblem."

Now, he said, "rather than running to the media or what have you, they just go out and clean it up and make it a nonproblem."

"This is a nonproblem.

"I don't want to amend the Constitution to solve a nonproblem," Mr. Bennett said.

She obviously had no desire to kill anyone, and just as obviously was not aware of the "Small Spirits" that made that particular issue a nonproblem.

Edward McSpedon, president of the Rail Construction Corporation, asserted that methane "has turned out to have been a nonproblem."

"We have medicalized a nonproblem," said Dr. Michael McClung, director of the Oregon Osteoporosis Center.

Professor Cole is concerned that the public will waste untold billions remediating what he considers to be a nonproblem, but there is evidence that his concern is misdirected.

"It's really a solution to a nonproblem," said Clark Wieman, the research director for the Cooper Union Infrastructure Institute, which studies New York City public works.

"Mass extinction was treated as a nonproblem," Mr. Alvarez writes in his deft and readable new book, "T. Rex and the Crater of Doom."

But if that turns out to be the case, it will have been a remarkably roundabout achievement, stemming largely from a crusade by one man to fix what looks an awful lot like a nonproblem.

Dr. Allen J. Hinkle, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the Dartmouth Medical Center who was among the petitioners, said the lollipop was a "cute solution to a nonproblem."

"Remember-the chewing out you get for bothering me with a nonproblem problem will never be as big as the one you get for not bothering me with a real problem."

But it said the emergency order to bar naked short selling "won't do much harm," and said "Critics might say it's a solution to a nonproblem, but the SEC doesn't claim to be solving a problem.

Compounding any problem (or nonproblem) is the traditional Western response to difficulties real or imagined: the tendency to see them emotionally, perceiving them as threats to one's personal survival-threats that must be fought tooth-and-nail to the bitter end.