Word: decibeled
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...vital to the pop-culture zeitgeist - has lately escalated to nuclear proportions. Both sides have gotten shriller and more dogmatic, as if they were wrangling over a public option in health-care reform or whether it's O.K. to tweet during sex. As someone who's amped up the decibel level on the creature-features subject (see my review of Thirst), I now believe the warring parties need to find some small patch of common ground. So can we agree on just one thing? A vampire movie (or novel, or TV show) is mainly about vampires; a zombie movie...
...European Union released a set of guidelines for manufacturers on Sept. 29 that will lower the default maximum-volume level on iPods and other portable music devices within the next two years. For some, this is nothing new - France already caps the decibel level on portable music players sold in the country at 100. But some devices are able to play as high as 120 decibels - a noise level equivalent to that generated by an airplane takeoff. So why is the E.U., like your nosy next-door neighbor, trying to force you turn down that racket? (See the 100 best...
...films, which cast gentiles in Jewish roles (Imelda Staunton, for example, as the stereotype mother in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, also about suburban Jews in the '60s), this one actually has ethnic-appropriate casting. The Jews here are sometimes broadly drawn - Larry's family slurps soup at a decibel level that even the Simpsons would find deafening - but they're fully assimilated. Nobody says, "Oy vey!" or talks shtick. If people answer a question with a question, the first would be Larry's plaintive "Why me?" when he seeks legal, emotional or spiritual help, and the second the world...
Peter Schiff is loud--a decibel or 12 above everybody else. And it's hard to get him to stop talking. Ask the man a simple question and you get a 10-minute harangue in response. This harangue is likely to feature libertarian political opinions that are by Schiff's own admission pretty extreme--inherited as they were from a father currently in prison (at age 81!) for refusing to pay income...
...long since went the way of the dodo—that guy with the iPhone who can google it follows conversations as a shark follows a ship—our fundamental ability to converse has suffered. Instead of marshaling facts and precedents, we simply unleash contrasting opinions at increasing decibel levels...