Word: spading
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...applying Pentagon-style systems analysis to his educational goals, is trying programmed teaching by computer in basic physics and German. He accents interdisciplinary studies, looks forward to a planned integrated medical center with a 300-bed teaching hospital and a 1,000-bed Veterans Administration hospital. His chromium spade for ground-breaking ceremonies will soon be worn thin: 15 big buildings are already UD, and 31 more are to be completed within two years...
...recently rented 300 acres of grassland, simply turned around and put it into the feed grain program's acreage diversion plan, which pays the farmer 62½ for every bushel of corn he does not grow but reasonably might have. Thus, without so much as sinking a spade in his earth, the farmer made a clear profit of more than $8,000. "And, besides," he noted accurately, "I can graze that rented land after October...
Could all this be of value to experts? Most agreed it could. Tournament players usually strive for contracts in the highpoint major suits-hearts and spades-or in no-trump. But hearts is the lowest-ranking of the three, the "danger suit." An opponent can shut out a heart bidder with a spade call at small risk. This, in turn, makes it much more costly for the heart bidder to reach his contract. If he knows his partners heart length, he reduces his risks...
Amado reads his characters in depth. There is no facile division into good guys and bad guys, and everyone's motives are mixed. The lawyer, Virgilio, who helps Horacio outwit the Badarós, also seduces Horacio's pretty wife. And spade-bearded Sinhó Badaró, who has arranged the killing of many men, still agonizes over each decision-in fact, his soul searching destroys the efficiency of his best gunman, Negro Damião. As in U.S. westerns, the land is the real hero, breeding men as luxuriant, lavish and cruel as itself. Presumably spurred...
...Howard Hawkes' version of "The Maltese Falcon." Based rather closely on the Raymond Chandler novel, which, in turn, seems to have borrowed heavily from Hammett's, "The Big Sleep" has several important elements in common with the earlier movie: Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is a just-barely-watered-down Sam Spade - a little more romantic, but otherwise every bit as hard and even more violent; he has to contend with a similarly secretive and much more attractive client (Lauren Bacall); and he, like Spade, has to keep the police at bay so they don't gum up his investigation...