Word: oomph
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...From State of Play Yates graduated to the Harry Potter franchise; he will have directed four of the final eight Potters.) The film's director, Kevin Macdonald, who did The Last King of Scotland, is not a flair fellow. The chase scenes interpolated into this version have no special oomph; the encounters no residual kick. Paging Ridley Scott? Oh, sorry, too late...
...That was big news if you were hunting for planets but no news at all if you were hunting for life. A planet with enough gravitational oomph to jiggle a star is probably a gas giant like Jupiter, orbiting so close to the fires of its sun that nothing living would have a chance. What biology needs in order to get going is a relatively small, rocky planet orbiting in what's called a star's habitable zone - a place where things get hot but not too hot, cold but not too cold. A place like Earth, in other words...
...point is, specifics really matter. And when specifics get left to Congress and the states, they tend to get screwed up. Politicians love to cut ribbons for new roads; repairs don't have the same bringing-home-the-bacon oomph. Most state transportation departments have become virtual asphalt factories, and most states have laws preventing the use of federal transportation dollars for anything but roads. Yet Congress keeps writing the states blank checks, lavishing the most cash on the ones that do the most driving and paving, actually mandating that federal officials "shall in no way infringe on the sovereign...
...MAKE HAY As those hands go down, throw a quick hook. But never wind up for extra oomph. "That's telegraphing the punch," he says...
...some nations have tended to whip up enthusiasm with a ribald reference or two (the now decertified second verse of the German national anthem can read like a gleeful celebration of sex and drunkenness), others rely on bombs bursting in air and other martial images for their oomph. France's La Marseillaise may be the most stirring of any national anthem (or so it sounded coming from the lovely mouth of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca), but you have to ask: are fields soaked in impure blood really the most fitting image for a modern anthem...