Word: balloons
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...Europe, officials are already struggling against the feeling that the air has gone out of the balloon following Monday's release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. In recent weeks, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany had been trying to hammer out a new set of sanctions aimed at persuading Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment program and cooperate fully with investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency over questions about its clandestine nuclear program prior to 2003. As recently as last weekend, senior diplomats from those countries met in Paris to debate...
...encourage a complete paradigm shift on how we use energy." Piccard, a 49-year-old Swiss psychiatrist and aeronaut, knows a thing or two about high-altitude derring-do. In 1999, he and a partner, Brian Jones, became the first people to circumnavigate the earth in a balloon, but it rankled Piccard that doing so required burning nearly four tons of propane gas. "The balloon flight was a personal dream, the last thing to write in the history books before the end of the 20th century," says Piccard, whose father and grandfather were legendary ballooning and diving adventurers. "This project...
...watchmaker Omega, part of the Swatch Group, which brings expertise in both miniaturization and efficient energy use; Deutsche Bank, which is keen to green its investment portfolio; and Belgian chemical and materials group Solvay, which backed the exploits of Piccard's grand-father, Auguste, when he co-piloted a balloon beyond the stratospheric altitude...
...book, Martin describes the park's kitsch splendor with the rapture of Marco Polo on first seeing China. There, he quickly located two mentors: Jim Barlow, performing sleight of hand at Merlin's Magic Shop, and at the Golden Horseshoe Revue, Wally Boag, a comic who made funny balloon animals. From them came the raw material for Martin...
...Brooks and Kaufman were the art house of post-funny, Martin was the mall. He bounded onstage with enormous energy, madly strumming his banjo ("I'm a-ramblin'!"), working the balloon animals, exhausting the audience into submission. Even if people didn't understand that he was playing the character of a jerk, they applauded as a reward for his efforts. After years of one-night stands in cities with interchangeably bland hotel rooms, Martin and his faux-idiocy finally caught on. (Guest spots on the Tonight Show and SNL helped.) The nobody was suddenly...