Word: grained
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...turning on Mao. Some peasants are flaunting old land deeds and demanding their farms back. Others are enlarging private plots, expanding their own private markets. Still others are disappearing from their farms altogether and fleeing to the cities. The result is that much of this year's grain crop, which should otherwise equal last year's 180 million tons, is in danger of remaining unharvested in the fields. In some areas, food prices are up as much as 20% from this spring...
...like many contemporary artists shares the impatience to see the future, even in mockups, for he feels that the U.S. is on the verge of a major artistic breakthrough. So far, he points out, the forms that the U.S. has contributed to Western civilization have been largely architectural: skyscrapers, grain silos, factories, petroleum drums, bridges. But Egypt matched its pyramids and temples with obelisks and sphinxes, while Greece's Parthenon was glorified by the handiwork of Phidias. Michelangelo unified Florence's Piazza della Signoria with his 14-ft.-high David-which was positioned in front of the Palazzo...
...Windsor Castle and emerged after an interview to proclaim the kind of admiration for George III that occasional U.S. visitors have felt for Ho Chi Minh: "I wished some of my violent countrymen could have such an opportunity. They would be convinced that George III has not one grain of tyranny in his composition. A man of his fine feelings, so good a husband, so kind a father cannot be a tyrant...
...trouble with that definition and the reason why the word has fallen into even deeper disrepute was noted as far back as 1905. Handing down the opinion in the case of Chicago Board of Trade v. Christie Grain, in which the court ruled that commodities trading and the Board of Trade served a legitimate purpose, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes sagely commented that when competent men engage in speculation, it is "the self-adjustment of society to the probable." But he added that its pervasive peril surfaces when "the success of the strong induces imitation by the weak, and incompetent persons...
...warnings were newsworthy but the game that prompted them is hardly new. Commodities traders wryly note, for instance, that the Old Testament's Joseph was the first man to corner the grain market. After all, when the seven fat years ended in Egypt and the seven lean years began, wasn't Joseph the only man with grain stacked in his barns? Seventeenth century Holland experienced one of the first of the futures markets. Dutchmen became so infatuated with tulips from Asia Minor that they stopped planting and began trading them. Prices rose to the point where one merchant...