Word: precious
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...perhaps the most beautiful ride I have ever taken, along winding mountain roads and through tunnels carved into the hills. All around us and below, the lights of Monaco sparkled on in the early morning darkness, like so many precious stones in the folds of a rich, dark velvet blanket. I thought of the princess, tucked safely away in her palace in this fairy tale land, and I thought of the words "happily ever after...
...where only the least promising, the worst and the dumbest, are allowed entrance. But there is, surprisingly, broad expert agreement that a large minority of people going to prison do not deserve that special bruising. Like war, imprisonment should be a government's last resort. It is too precious a resource, too expensive and damaging, to waste on the run of criminals...
...early education, Henry Adams once wrote, "It taught little and that little ill." Many of America's schools today teach precious little of what students ought to know, and that little ill. High school diplomas are routinely awarded to students who are functionally illiterate, who cannot do long division, and who have no idea what is contained in the Bill of Rights. Among educators there is a sense of desperation that America's young lack even the rudiments of learning, and a still greater feeling of despair that nothing can be done about it. What can and should...
...sale of most of the world's diamonds, has called the site "the most important primary deposit found anywhere in the world since the discovery at Kimberley more than a century ago." The rich ore of the Jwaneng mine is expected to produce 3 million carats of precious stones in 1982, and eventually 4.5 million carats annually, nearly one-quarter of De Beers' total output...
This year, however, many of the diamonds laboriously extracted from the arid Botswana earth will not be sold. They will instead be added to the growing De Beers stockpile of gems. The reason is that there is a worldwide glut of the precious gems. The vaults of diamond wholesalers are overflowing with rough as well as cut and polished stones, and the market for investment-grade diamonds has virtually collapsed. A rare one-carat D-flawless-grade stone that brought $62,000 at the peak of the market in 1980 is now worth only $15,000 or less, a decline...