What is the Secret Behind the Bad Writing of Lost Symbol Author Dan Brown?
Angels and Demons, Bad Writing, D.C., Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol, Washington
By Tom Chivers
TELEGRAPH UK
15 Sep 2009
If Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol is anything like his previous works, it will not go down well with the critics. Famously, comedian Stewart Lee mocked him for using the sentence “The famous man looked at the red cup” in his bestselling The Da Vinci Code. • Dan Brown’s conspiracy theories: six of the best
In fact, Lee was making that up – the sentence never appears in the book. So are the critics unfair on Brown?
They’re certainly harsh. Edinburgh professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum says “Brown’s writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad.” He picks out some excerpts for special criticism. The female lead in Angels and Demons learns of the death of her scientist father: “Genius, she thought. My father . . . Dad. Dead.” A member of the Vatican Guard in the same book becomes annoyed by something, and we learn that “his eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.”
Below we have selected 20 phrases that may grate on the ear. It’s not a definitive list. It couldn’t be: he has published five novels, each around 500 pages long, and the arguments over which are the worst bits will go on for a while. But it’s our list. Add your own in the comment box below.
20. Angels and Demons, chapter 1: Although not overly handsome in a classical sense, the forty-year-old Langdon had what his female colleagues referred to as an ‘erudite’ appeal — wisp of gray in his thick brown hair, probing blue eyes, an arrestingly deep voice, and the strong, carefree smile of a collegiate athlete.
They say the first rule of fiction is “show, don’t tell”. This fails that rule.
19. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 83: “The Knights Templar were warriors,” Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space.
“Remind” is a transitive verb – you need to remind someone of something. You can’t just remind. And if the crutches echo, we know the space is reverberant.
40 Jackass Cowboy Fans Arrested For Being Drunk at Dallas Opener
Dallas Cowboys, NFL, Public Intoxication, Texas, Texas Douchebags
DALLAS STAR TELEGRAM
More than 40 partiers at Cowboys game jailed for intoxication
Posted Monday, Sep. 21, 2009
By NATHANIEL JONES
ARLINGTON — Some 40 fans who attended Sunday night’s football game at the new Cowboys Stadium will likely be late to work Monday morning.
As of 7 a.m. Monday, 41 people were sobering up in the Arlington jail after they were arrested during and after the 33-31 defeat of the Cowboys at the hands of the New York Giants.
There might have been more people arrested at the game, but the exact number was unclear Monday morning. That’s because some people may have bonded out of jail between game start and 6 a.m. Monday.
Bail for public intoxication is $304, according to the Arlington police online jail log.
All were arrested in the 900 block of East Randol Mill Road.
Two people were arrested for fighting and three people who were suspected of driving while intoxicated near the stadium also remained in jail, according to the online log.
A record-setting crowd of 105,121 attended the Dallas Cowboys’ first home football game of the season.
By halftime, 28 people had been kicked out of the game, said Tiara Ellis Richard, an Arlington Texas spokeswoman.
Public Option Now: Wake Up To Find Out That We Are The Eyes of The World
Grateful Dead, One World, Public Option, Rock and RollWapo Reporter Achenbach Defends His Friend's Time Magazine Puff Piece on the Dangerous Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck, GOP, Jamison Foser, Joel Achenbach, Media, Media Matters, Nutjobs, Time Magazine, Washington Post
WaPo reporter and “close friend” of Von Drehle defends Beck profile; attacks me
September 18, 2009 12:06 pm ET – by Jamison Foser
Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach leaps to his “close friend” David Von Drehle’s defense, calling my criticism of Von Drehle’s Glenn Beck profile “shrill,” and accuses me of criticizing the article “because one of the targets of Dave’s story is Media Matters itself. Which Foser doesn’t bother to note.”
Let’s take that part first: Ludicrous. Von Drehle makes only passing mention of Media Matters; here it is:
“[T]here are ancillary industries feeding on the success of Beck and others like him. Both left- and right-wing not-for-profit groups operate as self-anointed media watchdogs, and one of the largest of these — the liberal group Media Matters for America — has a multimillion-dollar budget. Staff members monitor Beck’s every public utterance, poised to cherry-pick the most inflammatory sentences. (Conservative outfits do the same for the likes of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.) These nuggets are used in turn to rev up donations to political parties and drive ratings for the endless rounds of talking-head shows.”
Really? That’s what led Achenbach to conclude that “one of the targets of Dave’s story is Media Matters,” and that I was motivated by a desire for revenge? Seems pretty weak.
Achenbach’s defense of his “close pal” David Von Drehle, and his attack on me, curiously avoids any discussion whatsoever of my central point: That Von Drehle failed to indicate a single falsehood Beck has ever told. That Von Drehle portrayed “liberal” estimates of the size of last week’s anti-Obama rally as no more valid than estimates from conservatives — estimates of 1 to 2 million people. Despite the fact that there clearly were not a million people at the rally. And despite the fact that the “liberal” estimates in fact came from news organizations and the DC fire department.
Since Achenbach ducked all that, here are some simple questions for him:
Real Time With Bill Maher September 18, 2009 Opening Monologue
Barack Obama, David Cross, Democrats, Gang of Six, GOP, Healthcare, Politics, Real Time, Wendell PotterThe Best of Noam Chomsky [Video]
American Hegemony, Banking, Communism, Congress, Corporatocracy, Imperialism, Iraq, Military Industrial Complex, MIT, Neocons, Noam Chomsky, Politics, Think-Tanks, Vietnam, Wall Street
Susan Boyle ~ Wild Horses ~ Live/Tape ~ AGT
AGT, Network Television, Susan Boyle, Wild HorsesMilitary Weapons Are Now Being Deployed Against Civilians
Military Industrial Complex, Military Weapons, Town HallsSuspect Raymond Clark III Arrested in Yale Killing; Charged With Murder
Annie Le, Connecticut, Crime, Murder, Raymond Clark III, Yale
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (CNN) — A Yale University lab technician was arrested Thursday in connection with the murder of a graduate student whose body was found in the basement wall of an off-campus medical research building, police said.
Raymond Clark was apprehended about 8:10 a.m. at a Super 8 motel in Cromwell, Connecticut, where he had spent the night after being released Wednesday following his submission to DNA testing.
Annie Le’s body was found in the basement wall of an off-campus medical research building. She had been strangled.
Le, 24, a pharmacology student, was last seen alive September 8, the day she appeared in a surveillance video entering a four-story lab at 10 Amistad St., about 10 blocks from the main campus.
Her body was found Sunday, on what was to have been her wedding day. 
Watch panelists weigh in on Le’s slaying »
Clark, 24, could have been arrested Wednesday if he had declined to provide DNA samples and allow police to search his home, but he was released after complying, New Haven city spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga.
Two other search warrants also were executed Wednesday — one on property belonging to Clark that was not named in the first warrant, and a second for Clark’s vehicle, which was being processed Wednesday evening, New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said. Watch how police briefly detained the lab tech »
Asked Wednesday if police have Clark under surveillance, Lewis said, “We know where Mr. Clark is at all times.” But, he added, there are others who police are monitoring “all the time.”
The only search warrants executed in the case have been those involving Clark, he said, but other people are being investigated.
He said Clark is a technician who does “custodial-type” work at the building. He answered police’s questions for a while at first, but later retained an attorney and stopped, Lewis said.
Lewis said Clark and Le worked in the same building and passed in the hallway, but he refused to comment further on whether they knew each other.
Investigators have collected about 250 pieces of evidence, Lewis said. Watch police discuss the investigation »
“If we have one match on a person we know was at that location,” police will seek an arrest warrant, he said Wednesday. Lewis earlier said police had reviewed about 700 hours of video and interviewed more than 150 people, some more than once.
A senior police official disputed Yale University President Richard Levin’s claims that the suspect pool would be a “limited number” of people who had been in the basement the day Le disappeared.
“We know everyone that was in the basement … and we passed that on to police,” Levin said. “There is an abundance of evidence.”
But the police official, whom CNN is not naming because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, said investigators believe dozens of people could have had access to that area of the building. Watch a timeline leading up to Le’s death »
Authorities have not released information on what DNA evidence may have been found, although investigators said earlier that bloody clothing was found hidden above tiles in a drop ceiling in another part of the building.
Police have not described the clothes that were found, nor said to whom they might have belonged. Teams of investigators at a Connecticut State Police lab worked through the weekend processing and examining the bloodstained garments.
But Thomas Kaplan, editor in chief of the Yale Daily News, said a Yale police official told the college paper that the clothes were not what Le was wearing when she entered the building.
Lewis said Wednesday that processing of the building was nearing completion and police would likely clear it Thursday morning.Watch a report on the police saying the killing was no random act »
Le was to have been married Sunday on New York’s Long Island to Jonathan Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student.
Le was from Placerville, California, and seemed to have been aware of the risks of crime in a university town. In February, she compared crime and safety at Yale with other Ivy League schools for a piece for B magazine, published by the medical school.
Among the tips she offered: Keep a minimum amount on your person. When she walked over to the research building last week, she left her purse, credit cards and cell phone in her office.
CNN’s Tom Foreman, Mary Snow and Shirley Zilberstein contributed to this report.
The New York Herald Sun 