I don't mean to imply that all lists involving urban areas are meaningless exercises in number-juggling.

You can argue that the preseason is a meaningless exercise designed to pad the owners' pockets.

But the lines have become so hazy that it's almost a meaningless exercise.

Distinguishing between substantive and procedural fairness is a meaningless exercise, as it merely clouds the process of judicial inquiry.

This meaningless exercise is only an excuse for the legions of taxi inspectors to write quick, quota-filling tickets.

Some doctors even argue that obtaining informed consent from them is a meaningless exercise promoted by ethicists who don't understand the realities of medicine.

Many railway lines were dubbed strategic, but strategy and economics are so inseparably intertwined that it is a meaningless exercise to attempt to separate them.

When the missionaries arrived in the 19th century, the first thing they did was translate the Bible into local languages, a meaningless exercise without copies to read.

Is it any wonder that voter turnout is at a record low when elections mostly serve as meaningless exercises?

"We will not ask our members to continue what has become a meaningless exercise," Ron Carey, the teamster union's national president, said in a statement.