Word: precious
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...helicopters and small planes, 80 Brazilian troops and government officials have spent the past three weeks dynamiting airstrips used by thousands of garimpeiros, or prospectors. Lured to the Brazil-Venezuela border by one of the world's richest deposits of gold, the garimpeiros have not only damaged a precious patch of rain forest but have also threatened the survival of the Yanomami, the Amazon's largest Stone Age tribe...
...with nature? Observes noted paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould: "It would be a very bleak world with cockroaches and dogs and not much else." The final blessing of the Endangered Species Act is that it preserves the elements that stir man's sense of wonder. That benefit alone is too precious for the God Squad to barter away...
Home schooling may have fought for the right to exist in the '80s, but as the sheer numbers grow, the battle now is over how much regulation is required. Often precious little: 32 states, from New York to California, demand only a high school diploma from parents who teach at home. Others, like South Carolina, require a college degree or passing grades on an entrance- / teaching exam. "You can be a fine home-school teacher with a high school diploma, compassion and motivation," argues Robert Ruthazer, a Navy commander whose wife Diane teaches their two children at home in Topsham...
...time like this, consumers and investors seek signs that people in charge are doing the right thing. But they have got precious little reassurance from Washington, where the House last week rejected the long- negotiated $500 billion deficit-cutting package, triggering a government shutdown and the furloughs of thousands of federal employees. "The government looks like it has lost control of the country," says Dwayne Andreas, chairman of the agricultural conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland...
Updike has certainly never lacked praise or recognition, but his productive career has also prompted a steady drone of cavils: too precious, too self- indulgent, too Waspish, too preoccupied with sex, religion and guilt. If any contradictory argument were needed, Rabbit at Rest provides it. Capping the Rabbit Quartet, this novel completes the most authoritative and most magical portrait yet written of the past four decades of American life...