Word: rains
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Gene Kelly once said, "There are no auteurs in musical pictures. It's impossible." He was referring to Singing in the Rain, a film that satirizes Hollywood while at the same time celebrating its excesses. Lavish sets, elaborate dance routines, thousands of costumes, hundreds of performers, whimsy and drama all in a extravagant package bursting with talented collaborators and tied off with a nice satiny bow. This is big-budget, Hollywood style filmmaking-a way of making movies that has become de rigeur since World War II. Kelly was not only talking about a single movie, he was anticipating...
...vocals on the album are so delicately beautiful it seems you can almost feel them on your skin. Somehow Healy manages to sound vulnerable without being precious or self-pitying. Perhaps it's the counterbalancing of pained lyrics (the title of their first single "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" says it all, really) with catchy choruses. Or maybe it's the occasional moment of sunshine through the rain, such as the guitar introduction for "Writing to Reach You," which obviously alludes to Oasis' optimistic "Wonderwall" before the lyrics proceed to question the happy jangly sound ("what...
...heroic deeds. "Don't kill the messenger," goes the saying, but today such advice is unnecessary because, for the most part, there are no messengers. If the Greeks had e-mail, Boston would not have its marathon. Likewise, the strong-souled stoicism of our present day couriers, who "come rain or snow or sleet or hail," is becoming obsolete, only to be replaced with a decidedly unheroic form of communication. The midnight e-mail of Paul Revere is not the stuff of epic poetry...
This creates an additional conundrum. Because a polluted cloud does not rain itself out, notes University of Colorado atmospheric scientist Brian Toon, it tends to grow larger and last longer, providing a shiny white surface that bounces sunlight out to space. Indeed, one reason the earth has not yet warmed up as much as many anticipated may be due to the tug-of-war between industrial aerosols like sulfuric acid (which reflect heat) and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (which trap it). Ironically, then, the cost of reducing one kind of pollution may come at the price of intensifying...
Removal of vegetative cover also worsens the flooding that occurs during periods of torrential rain. Riverine forests serve as sponges that soak up excess water, preventing it from rushing all at once into rivers and tributaries. In similar fashion, estuarine wetlands and mangrove forests help shield human settlements from the storm surges that accompany tropical cyclones and hurricanes. Biologists estimate that 50% of the world's mangrove forests have already been replaced by everything from shantytowns to cement plants and shrimp farms. Stir in the expectation that rising temperatures will trigger a rise in sea level, and you have...