- You know, if you’re going to get a tramp stamp lower-back tatoo…
- The other day, I posed a question on Twitter and Facebook: grammatically, should it be the Beatles or The Beatles? I wasn’t interested so much in this particular example, but what people thought about the capitalization of the lead-in article. My question brought in a flurry of responses, some very well thought out, most in favor of capitalizing the “The,” only one (not in favor) citing an actual style guide, but I don’t think we reached anything like a consensus. It’s one of those things that boils down, for the most part, to personal aesthetics. I almost always write the Beatles, lower-case t, just as I almost always don’t italicize the “the” before “the New York Times.” You can find lots of people (and style guides) that dictate one or the other, but it pretty much comes down to personal preference. This particular example wasn’t work-related, so I didn’t have the APA style guide to fall back on. Despite what I usually do, this time I went with the capital T.
I bring all of this up simply because I was amused to see my initial question listed among Wikipedia’s lamest edit wars. You have to know which battles are worth picking. [via]
- No E-Books Allowed in This Establishment. Just lame.
- On the one hand, I’m intrigued by the idea of an Outer Limits movie. On the other hand, maybe a financially troubled studio and a pair of Saw writers aren’t the best people to see it through.
I do find it curious that none of the reports I’ve seen mention the more recent ’90s adaptation of the show — which, for better or worse, ran 5 years longer than the original.
- And finally, Jacob Weisberg on Sarah Palin:
The non-Sarah Dittoheads among us have to decide whether to regard this babble—favoring creation science, aerial wolf-shooting, and freedom of the press, so long as the press is “accurate”—as scary or funny. During the 2008 campaign, when there was a real chance that Palin could become the automatic successor to an impulsive, elderly cancer survivor, I found it more scary than funny. After McCain lost, and after Palin terminated her governorship in the effusion of furious gibberish known as her resignation speech, I have found it mostly funny. To be alarmed by Palin today presumes a Republican Party suicidal enough to want her to do more than run its weekend paintball games.
Me, I’m still a little scared. In today’s politics of the right, crazy is quickly becoming the new sane, and crazy seems to love it some Sarah Palin, you betcha. [via]