The Chinese, as the republican Sun Yat-sen once remarked, are a dish of loose sand.

ECONOMIST: China: No cementing a dish of loose sand | The

Two miles into our northward hike, however, the toil of schlepping our packs over loose sand sapped us.

FORBES: Paradise Lost

Well, after scooping up some loose sand, Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments found a menagerie of chemicals, including sulfur, chlorine, and traces of carbon-based materials.

ENGADGET: NASA Curiosity rover digs Mars, finds sulfur, chlorine and organic traces of unknown origin

In between came Camus's two best-known works, "The Stranger" (1942), in which the collaborating sun, sea and sand play a deadly role, and "The Plague" (1947), a loose allegory of occupation (by rats) set in Oran, Algeria's second city.

WSJ: Book Review: Algerian Chronicles