Word: rakings
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...least one passage, Chavkin even distorts the truth in his quest for muck to rake, twisting the much-misrepresented ideas of sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, to give himself a target for an assault on determinism. Chavkin writes, "Wilson's contention is that it is the genes and not cultural evolution or socioeconomics or political environment that are responsible for human behavior." In fact, Wilson simply says that genes play a large, but not solo, role in shaping human behavior; he would hardly be happy with Chavkin's characterization of his ideas...
...shiny new roulette wheel slowed, the hopping ivory ball fell into the green "0" slot, allowing the croupier to rake in the bets. A few minutes later, against the odds, 'the ball dropped into the "00" slot, again making losers of almost all the bettors pressed against the table. The house, predictably, was starting off ahead...
...brothers only Isaac was a bore. Simon bought his way into the Senate, where as a Republican from Colorado he spoke against "cheap Spanish lead and also the Australian lead." Benjamin, the charming rake, went down on the Titanic, changing into evening clothes for the event. William, another wastrel, named the principal rooms in his house after the metals on which his fortune was based; the Salon d'Or was reserved for love. Solomon, who kept a suite at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, gave the doorman $1,000 tips so that he could keep his Fierce-Arrow parked...
...Pallottine Fathers, an international order founded in Italy in 1835, support 2,200 priests and brothers in 26 countries. Its U.S. fund raisers were tired of pleading for nickels and dimes, year after year. By applying hard-sell money-raising means to the world of charity they could swiftly rake in $30 million in capital, invest it, and then they and their missions might live beneficently and happily ever after...
...Shan state, Chinese warlords left over from Kuomintang forces that fled south from China in the late 1940s and various tribesmen in southern Burma who have never acknowledged the rule of Rangoon. All these groups long depended for most of their cash income not on jade but on the rake-off from the lucrative opium trade that originates in the mountain poppy fields of the Golden Triangle of Laos, Burma and Thailand. Now, with Thailand's sharp crackdown on drug smugglers, the jade trade is growing in importance...