Word: precious
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...beneath those miracle plants the precious mantle of topsoil is washing away, some 13 tons per acre every year. The experts say a tolerable limit is a five-ton loss. So if nothing more is done, in less than 50 years the great resource on which rests our national strength and confidence will begin to ebb. And we could lose more than that, says Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington. A thousand years ago, the Mayan civilization in the Guatemalan lowlands disappeared in a few decades after 17 centuries of development. Modern analysis found that this agriculture-intensive...
...entire village assembled. "There was a fine mist of clouds around us, and the moon rose behind it," Amin Jan recalls. "The women and children were weeping." Those who owned trucks loaded them high with blankets, heirloom carpets, anything they could salvage from their bomb-shattered homes; others piled precious possessions on top of mules and camels or carried what they could: a lantern, a teapot, a generations-old copy of the Koran. While it was dark, they traveled fast along the rough mountain roads; during the day, when planes or helicopters reappeared in the skies, the refugees took shelter...
...scientists, putting the demands of native custom before those of scientific knowledge is a disturbing trend. Ancient bones often provide the sole link to prehistoric societies, giving evidence of diet, brain size, stature, disease and longevity. Should scientists be deprived of the right to study these precious fossils, says Anthropologist Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan, "it would be an unparalleled tragedy." Studies of aboriginal bones are yielding some particularly important findings. Scientists had long assumed that the original Australians migrated to the continent from Indonesia about 10,000 years ago and, isolated from the influence of other societies...
...Antonio Salieri, the 18th century Italian composer whom Peter Shaffer resurrected in fictional form for his 1979 play Amadeus, one peculiar genius was even more frightening: a precious gift and a malicious joke from God. The creature's name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-"Spiteful, sniggering, conceited, infantine Mozart!" as the play's Salieri, his contemporary and rival, calls him. "I had heard a voice of God," the Italian mutters after listening to a Mozart adagio, "and it was the voice of an obscene child!" Salieri carried a double curse: to appreciate beyond pain or pleasure Mozart...
Meanwhile, each side tried to divine the other's hand. Britain feared that Peking would make good on its unilateral threat. The Chinese in turn realized that in undermining the colony's confidence, they were in danger of radically devaluing the precious capitalist gem they expected to acquire. After all, the 400-sq.-mi. enclave boasts exports greater than those of the entire People's Republic and supplies China with some 40% of its foreign exchange. Most important, perhaps, Peking hoped that by transforming Hong Kong into a semiautonomous special administrative zone without fuss, it could tempt...