Word: equilibrium
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Streep is always entertaining to watch, even when, as here, she looks like a debutante holidaying among the homeless. Both she and Helen are, after all, Vassar girls, and she bears herself with the shambling dignity of a gentlewoman trying to maintain moral equilibrium while on the skids. But Streep's role is small. Nicholson must carry the film, and it is no fair burden. In one or two other films, this sexy, daredevil performer has renounced his star quality, tamped his radiance, sat on his capacious charm, as if this were a higher form of acting...
...millenniums, the process of ozone production and destruction has been more or less in equilibrium. Then in 1928 a group of chemists at General Motors invented a nontoxic, inert gas (meaning that it does not easily react with other substances) that was first used as a coolant in refrigerators. By the 1960s, manufacturers were using similar compounds, generically called chlorofluorocarbons, as propellants in aerosol sprays. As industrial chemicals, they were ideal. "The propellants had to be inert," says Chemist Ralph Cicerone, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "You didn't want the spray in a can labeled 'blue paint...
Another contributor to climatic change is the biosphere -- scientific jargon for the realm of all living things on earth. And it is the biosphere that threatens to tip the balance. To be sure, many of its effects are natural and as such have long been part of the climatic equilibrium. Termites, for example, produce enormous amounts of gas as they digest woody vegetation: a single termite mound can emit five liters of methane a minute. The methane escapes into the atmosphere, where it can not only destroy ozone but also act as a greenhouse gas in its own right. "Termites...
...controversial package of sweeping economic policies. At the core of the new legislation: Eastern Europe's first major personal income and value-added taxes. Said Richard Hirschler, an editor at the respected economic weekly HVG: "This could be the start of a fundamental shift in economic and political equilibrium in Hungary...
...sped-up clouds, erosion, and decay aren't able to disturb your natural equilibrium, though, the train scenes will. Fricke places his camera on the front of an engine and the film accelerates as the train wends though tunnels and around curves and across mountain passes. There's no question you're on a runaway train...