Word: ballasts
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...Kopperud spins some memorable scenes: a desert girl in a white T shirt dancing to Bob Marley, a boy monk in a burnished temple dispensing wisdom with a marble. The best of these freight the tale with visual and emotional meaning. Longing needs the ballast. Kopperud has a philosophy student's weakness for spiraling, unanswerable rhetorical queries...
...name implies, a bond is also a kind of contract that commits the borrower to give you all your money back down the road. So bonds, unlike stocks, almost never go to zero, making them the ultimate trust-no-one investment. What's more, they can provide ballast for a sinking stock portfolio. "Bonds have actually outperformed stocks over the last five years," points out portfolio manager Ian McKinnon of the Vanguard Group. While stocks have gained 6.1% annually over that period (and lost a ton lately), bonds have earned better than 7% per year...
Even if you keep in mind that Norman Mailer will turn 80 in January, you still pause when he puts a hearing aid behind each of those notable ears. "The body is like an old boat in stormy seas," he shrugs. "To stay afloat, you keep throwing ballast overboard. All the senses go--hearing, eyesight, smell...
...Richter was a lot more than sofa ballast. Where other talk-show sidekicks once grinned and fed the boss straight lines, the acerbic Richter was an integral, almost equal partner, doing comedy bits and zany reporting segments on the road. Over seven years, he took that most emasculating of show-biz roles and gave it something like dignity. (Even if he once had to streak onto the Today show set in flesh-colored underwear as a prank for Late Night.) "Sometimes we'd have an older guest who wasn't too familiar with the show," remembers O'Brien...
...Since Election Day, Lieberman has been the recount absolutist. The moral certainty that drove some of his Senate colleagues to distraction - when he voted his conscience instead of his party - has provided crucial ballast here. Al Gore, under pressure known to change his story, his message, his demeanor and his clothes, has resisted the weight of opinion in favor of getting it over rather than getting it correct. This has meant that Lieberman, considered a happy St. Bernard in 12 years in the Senate - "as moral, decent and honorable a man as I've known there," said Senator John McCain...