Word: ballast
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...Catholic guilt. Over-sensitive to and assuming responsibility for every family disturbance, McCandlish’s portrayal of Emily redefines the word “hysterical.” McCandlish’s endless apologies and self-imposed punishments would be too over-the-top without the sarcastic ballast of the rest of the cast. As Boo’s father Karl, Kawaller injects “Bette and Boo” with snappy humor in his snide asides. In his turn as an irreverent Catholic priest, Father Donnally, Daniel J. Wilner ’07 presents similar moments...
...especially to the 500 million people who will celebrate the 37th Earth Day this weekend—a collective “not dead yet” wheeze. However, these numbers mask the growing irrelevance of the environmentalist movement. Having lost its credibility with alarmist rhetoric and obsolete ideological ballast, the movement must develop a moderate discourse while challenging its previous assumptions and outdated theories...
...Ballast is not an attribute commonly attributed to pop stars. Bono, 45, spends his evenings lifting people to their feet, but offstage, he can be almost aggressively grounded. One morning a few days before the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death, Bono stands on the balcony of his New York City apartment overlooking Central Park. "You know what my least favorite John Lennon song is?" he says. "Imagine. At the root of it is some rigorous thinking about the way things could be, but people have stolen the idea and made it an anthem for wishful thinking...
Without any ideological ballast, the Bush Presidency resembles nothing more than the bastard child of the Harding and Johnson administrations: from cronyism at home (from Brown at FEMA to the Miers nomination) and abroad (Iraq reconstruction contracts), to overly ambitious Great Society spending at home (Medicaid) and quagmire wars (Iraq, again). If, despite a comfortable Senate majority, Bush will not or cannot nominate a bold constructionist to the Supreme Court, it is clear that the administration and the Republican Party at large are without cohesive intellectual principles, message or vision; they are unified only by their short-term desire...
...year, says criminologist Pi Yijun of the China Politics and Law University. Stunned parents and authorities are searching for reasons for the surge. Some blame greater individual freedom and the decline of authoritarian control. Others explain it as the result of epochal social change and the loss of moral ballast once supplied by communist ideology...