Word: drain
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cynics who have seen I.R.A. cease-fires come and go will not bet on it -- even if the desire for peace is as strong as it has ever been. Weary of the war and its drain on the exchequer, the British government would welcome the chance to bring its troops home from Northern Ireland, where the struggle in Ulster is increasingly viewed with a sense of distance and disgust, could do without the headache the confrontation presents. The majority of people in Northern Ireland itself, be they Roman Catholic or Protestant, would simply like to get on with their lives...
...MUSA Indo-Suriname asked to buy the rights to Suriname's trees. Cash-starved regimes are fond of selling timber concessions because they can put money in a treasury at little immediate cost to the government, while other industries can take years to produce results. Timber operations often ultimately drain more money than they yield by burdening a nation's infrastructure and degrading precious natural assets, but it is easy for a sitting government to ignore these costs because they become a problem only for subsequent administrations...
...tarp won. Infield red clay turned to instant ooze. Game called. Ten grand or so in gate receipts and hot-dog sales down the drain. "That's life in the minor leagues," said one of the vanquished, assistant general manager Richard Lenfest, as rain ran down his legs and into his sneakers...
...find ways to domesticate it. Some of us try to take the sting out of mortality by talking of "passing away" or going to "the Great Dugout in the Sky" (while doctors, who have to deal with it daily, refer, even more coolly, to "coding" or "circling the drain"). Others try to romanticize it as the great escape, the best anesthetic outside of Prozac. Those who cannot countenance any hope in the world find it the ultimate (indeed!) confirmation of their grimmest fears. Death, after all, is the only reality that never lets you down. Yet that...
Gore's technical answers to questions posed by alumni seemed to drain much of the audience's interest...