Word: stiff
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...have coaxed a cheer from onlookers, but last week's Rabin/Arafat handclasp was a trifle stiff. That would place it on the chilly end in any ranking of the great modern gestures of reconciliation -- listed here in order of increasing warmheartedness...
From the moment he appeared silhouetted against the White House, in sharp- pressed khakis and trademark kaffiyeh, Arafat couldn't stop smiling. This was the arrival on the world stage he had always dreamed of. Rabin was plainly of a different mind, uncomfortable and stiff. His body language throughout the ceremony -- the tics, the cocking of his head, the eyes cast toward the sky, the ground, anywhere but Arafat -- gave away just how uneasy...
These interviews, alas, seem rather stiff and dutiful. Mahoney's impressions of everyday life, by contrast, are as bracing as May mornings in Corofin, the West Clare town where she lived alone in a darkling castle worthy of the Addams family. She is puzzled by the chronic lateness of the Irish, for whom a 7 o'clock appointment can mean any time at all. She delights in their colorful nicknames -- Mickey the Bridge for a man who lives near one. Irish men are often regular churchgoers, she notes, even though they might lurch into the pews for a Saturday-evening...
Black thinks of himself not just as an heir to country, but as a child of pop; he grew up listening to such mainstream stars as James Taylor and Jackson Browne. Nonetheless, many songs on Black's first three albums seemed stiff and traditional; the intensity of his emotions was displayed only rarely. On No Time to Kill, collaborators help bring out the best in him. In A Bad Goodbye, he sings a duet with Wynonna Judd, who draws out an emotional edge in his ! voice. On Happiness Alone, Black and co-writer Jimmy Buffet turn the usual country formula...
...chagrin of big U.S. steel companies, the U.S. International Trade Commission cleared foreign steel firms of most of the pending charges that they had engaged in unfair trade practices. As a result, most of the stiff tariffs on foreign steel imposed last month by the Commerce Department will be rescinded...