Word: grasping
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...constantly consult the past as a reference by which to measure the next cultural advance. But the distinction between these two views of time, says Lévi-Strauss, is not a measure of intelligence: "It is quite certain that no culture is absolutely stationary. All peoples have a grasp of techniques which are sufficiently elaborate to enable them to control their environment." Civilized societies, he says, "traffic in ideas; the savage hoards them...
Financial Juggles. The son of a successful lawyer, Abs forsook law studies at Bonn University to learn banking in Cologne, Amsterdam, Paris, London and New York. At 36, his grasp of international finance led to his appointment as head of the Deutsche Bank's foreign department. Though inevitably involved in the financial juggles of the Hitler regime, Abs did not join the Nazi Party and at the end of World War II quietly retired to his Rhineland estate. Tapped in 1948 to run the agency that distributed Marshall Plan credit to German industry, Abs soon became a close adviser...
...past nine months, as Red China writhed in the grasp of Mao Tse-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Hong Kong has been the chief watching point for the outside world...
...eight-year terms. University of Minnesota regents are elected by the state legislature for six years. The University of Alabama board selects its own new members for twelve years. Inevitably, the new regent takes years to get oriented. "Regardless of how much you study, you never get the grasp of a university the way you would of your own business," concedes Wisconsin Regent Charles D. Gelatt...
...material. In The Bridal Canopy, the Hasid Reb Yudel Nathanson, a deliberately quixotic hero, half saint, half shlemiel, sets out to beg a dowry for his daughters. The book is one long metaphor for the wandering Jew, but Agnon heroes have a disconcerting universality. "A difficult thing to grasp," says Reb Yudel, pondering war. "What satisfaction do the kings derive in sending folk of this countryside to another land and folk of another land to this countryside? What difference does it make to the Angel of Death whether he has to come here or go there...