Open Threads

On the upside, it’s Friday. On the downside we’re living in the Oscar calendar shadow when studios dump the turkeys that they can’t afford to cut up and burn, as much as they might want to. Weirdly enough The Lives of Others looks pretty good, so I may break out of my beer-and-a-Blockbuster-DVD funk* long enough to see it.

(*) Kandahar – Disturbing, moving. The Return – morose life-is-pain europhilosophizing. The Descent – scary as hell until the easy-to-kill vampire people show up. The Matador – I forget why the hell I rented that. Egh. Rififi – Why keep making heist movies after Jules Dassin made this? It’s that good. I agree with John about Little Miss Sunshine, although it seems a little effervescent for a Best Picture nod. Etc.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (46)

Reading up on more of the Marcotte/McEwan Marathon, and saw this paragraph:

Writing is a revelatory thing. Use of ALL CAPS is a shout; use of profanity to me reflects unseriousness and lack of a vocabulary (or at least a thesaurus) and a lack of manners. Using every single issue to smear and denigrate rather than persuade, enlighten, or heck, just entertain for a second, makes the writer look like a loon. Making every post somehow All About Me and My Proclivities That You Can’t Stop exhibits paranoia. It just does. And that’s why the two bloggers have become a liability.

Do people actually use a thesaurus? I simply do not recall a time that I have ever needed one other than trying to cheat while doing a crossword puzzle. Dictionaries are invaluable- I am, at least once a week, referring a dictionary to make sure I am using a word properly or a student has used a word properly.

But the thesaurus? I never use one, I don’t own one, and I think if I did, it would make my writing seem forced.

The ThesaurusPost + Comments (51)

By request.

Some IPCC-related links if people feel like talking about climate:

Washington Post.
Tim Lambert deals with some confusion about sea level predictions.
The part about hurricanes doesn’t say much. There are more hurricanes in the Atlantic and warming seas will absolutely magnify hurricane strength. That is just a natural consequence of how huricanes form. But as to whether individual storms are the result of warming, meh.
RealClimate is currently down. For the most nuts-and-bolts discussion of the issue, check with them when the site comes back up.

Non-Football Open ThreadPost + Comments (195)

She’ll be missed.

Molly Ivins, RIPPost + Comments (28)

I can’t speak for John, but I plan to be extremely busy today. Talk amongst yourselves in the meantime.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (158)