The Battle Bar, Our Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

Originally posted by truejedi
VERY interesting:

[B]
Geithner on taxes: Also on “Meet” yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner didn’t rule out the Obama administration having to raise taxes to shore up the nation’s debt, and he struggled mightily NOT to actually admit it. “I just want to say this very clearly. [Obama] was committed in the campaign to make--he said in the campaign and he is committed to make sure we do this in a way that is not going to add to the burden on people making less than $250,000 a year. Now, it's going to be hard to do that, but he's committed to doing that and we can do that… We're going to have to do it in a way that's going to help to meet that test, meet that commitment, the commitment he made, to do it in a way that's fair to Americans and make sure we do it in a way that's going to allow--provide for growth and recovery going forward. But we can do this. You know, this is not beyond our capacity as a country to do.” Has "hard choices" become code for "tax hikes"?

[/B]

His choices are either raise taxes or continue deficit spending through stimulus programs. The Obama administration put themselves in this position. There's something wrong with economists who believe consumer spending is all that matters.

Originally posted by mattatom
Would you lose faith in me If I said I liked said book and all his other works?

Not particularly. I've read them all. Of course, I have also read and enjoyed books like Eragon and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Liking a book does not mean that one thinks it is a "real" book. For some deconstruction of Dan Brown, visit this site:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/000906.html
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001622.html
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001631.html [especially this one]
http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001811.html

The kaleidoscope of power

Done forever with my reading of The Da Vinci Code, I had to find a way of disposing of the offending object. (Even the title contains a linguistic error, Adam Gopnik claims in this week's issue of The New Yorker. Leonardo came from Vinci. Da Vinci is not a name. It's a prepositional phrase, like of Nazareth in Jesus of Nazareth. What would Of Nazareth do?)

But clogged recycling centers are now refusing to accept copies of Brown's book, and libraries are closing their after-hours book drops to avoid having people getting rid of them that way by night. So (I'm a cruel father, but fair) I hit upon the idea of sending the book on to my son Calvin, who I recently learned had not read it. Within a day or two after the package reached him I got an email:

The Da Vinci Code, page 30:

"Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow."

What the **** does that even mean?

Perhaps he meant something like: "The kaleidoscope of power had been shaken and the orange-green pattern of courage had been consumed by the yellow-red jumble of fear"?

Calvin did explore the matter a bit further, looking up kaleidoscope on dictionary.com, and he found a possibly relevant though little-known third definition for the word — after (1) pattern-displaying optical toy with mirrors and lenses and colored glass pieces, and (2) multi-colored pattern such as is produced thereby:

3. A series of changing phases or events: a kaleidoscope of illusions.

But he comments:

Even so, that has got to be one of the worst mixed metaphors ever. It's like mixing oil and Lego. And I'm still reeling from the crunchy salad.

Quite so. After all, the shaking of a kaleidoscope generally has effects involving new randomly selected patterns of colors, but that is not a blow. So what was the blow? The kaleidoscope of power had been shaken according to Brown's metaphor, not hit with a heavy blunt instrument. And why would shaking the kaleidoscope mean Aringarosa had been hit? Perhaps someone hit Aringarosa over the head with the kaleidoscope of power... in order to avoid having to shake it?

One has to admit, Calvin is right, we don't have a clear picture here. But then it's always like that with Dan Brown. As I believe I may have said before, when Dan Brown is doing the describing, you really need pictures.

Linguists, who do not like Dan Brown's literary works have written these often amusing entries.

Erh hum, I just Reread Eragon and ordered Eldest and Brisingr, I enjoy the books the movie and game just made it look terrible.

The thing is that a book can be enjoyable without it being good. There are entire wikis devoted to poking fun at Paolini's atrocious writing, but I still like the stories he's trying to tell.

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
The thing is that a book can be enjoyable without it being good. There are entire wikis devoted to poking fun at Paolini's atrocious writing, but I still like the stories he's trying to tell.

He tells good stories. He tells them poorly.

Following Paolini’s prose is an effort which isn’t made any easier by the moded style that he has chosen to adopt. Rather than sounding timeless or like “the lyrical beauty of Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf,” the language is pretentious and stupid. Good writers use complex language to provide illumination. Paolini sounds like he is attempting to get off using his thesaurus. If the prose is pretentious, the dialogue is even worse. It fails to approach realistic much less elegant. Consider one example where Eragon and Roran share a particularly gag inducing conversation prior to assaulting the Ra’zak, “Even we, who were boys but a short while ago, cannot escape the inexorable progress of time. So the generations pass …” Paolini continues on like this for another ten pages.

At the moment I can't find the wiki I was thinking of. Srry.

But you can't actually think that the writing is good, can you?

this is an entry in the wiki (probly by the same person) but not the wiki itself:

http://kippurbird.livejournal.com/337504.html

Found it!

http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/eragon_sporkings_page
http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/eldest_sporkings_page
http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/Brisinger

It's baaad.

Yes. The cat's name is Serious Ass.

I cannot be held accountable for the author's misuse of the phrase "begging the question."

Quadruple post is BAD. No I don't think his writing his good. He tells the story well, just badly. It's like listening to a gypsy with a speech impediment.

I was shooting for quintuple, but I demand multipoasts to be earnest.

I will add another 👆 for your gypsy analogy.

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
I was shooting for quintuple, but I demand multipoasts to be earnest.

I will add another 👆 for your gypsy analogy.

Why thankyou, I'm racking them up this year!

Edit: See I edit my posts and check out my user Profile 😉

Fictional novels are defined by the stories they tell, not the writing that presents it. The writing is simply the "window" into the story; the story is why the book exists - its purpose. The writing is fundamentally a means to an end; the story is the end. In fiction, the writing serves no purpose without the story; it owes its existence to the story that it's telling. And Dan Brown tells a far better story than any other novelist out there. Not that his writing's that bad anyway. It's certainly not bad enough that it has a negative impact on the reader's interpretation of the storyline, and I would imagine that those mentioned linguists are mostly bitter that they lack the creativity to tell a storyline even remotely comparable to any of Dan's works.

You want to call Brown's work "creative?"

crylaugh

It is the most formulaic, homogeneous claptrap I've ever read.

1. Smart-ish wunderkind scientist
2. Elaborate problem that only their specific specialty can solve.
3. Outlandish conspiracy theory spoonfed to their less-intelligent opposite-sex partner.
4. Bad guy introduced, ostensibly as an ally.
5. Moar consirzys.
6. Betrayal of some sort.
7. Mystery was true all along.

Angels and Demons follows the same path as Da Vinci does. Digital Fortress would be identical, but the mystery was actually yet another Xanatos Gambit. As was Deception Point.

After reading Da Vinci I read all of his other books. After finishing Deception Point I was not surprised by the track of his story. As in, ever.

Srsly Neb, everything you like is terrible. And most are objectively terrible.

Tbh Red, I like the plot's and the details just not the repetetiveness.

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
👆

Ender's Game

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
[B]Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Originally posted by mattatom
Tbh Red, I like the plot's and the details just not the repetetiveness.

That was also my initial position. Then I read all of his books.

The novelty wore off and I found I couldn't even like what I did before. Most of the problem was Angels, which was just Da Vinci, except more.

More problems, same level of good stuff. In fact, the same good stuff. So everything he's done is relegated to the "pulp" pile.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_el_st_lo/us_gay_marriage_maine

Haha. HAHAHAHA

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_el_st_lo/us_gay_marriage_maine

Haha. HAHAHAHA

Lol at the last part (which is totally off-topic):

"• Another measure in Maine, which easily won approval, will allow dispensaries to supply marijuana to patients for medicinal purposes. It is a follow-up to a 1999 measure that legalized medical marijuana but did not set up a distribution system.

• The Colorado ski town of Breckenridge voted overwhelmingly to allow adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana."

EDIT: So the US is being more pro marijuana and contra gay marriage.