Natural and "man-made" disasters.

The science in 2012, the most recent disaster film directed and written by Roland Emmerich is flimsy, the plot is clichéd, the characters are wafer-thin (can't fault the actors, they do their best but how can you wring drama from lines that were telegraphed to the audience 3 scenes beforehand?), and the special effects - though spectacular - feel déjà vu, as though CGI footage was recycled from The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day.

Which leads to thoughts about other disasters threatening to destroy the planet. For example: in C.C.'s blogpost Palin 2012!: flimsy science + banal narrative + shallow characterizations + re-purposed effects = Sarah's strategy to win the White House in 2012, aka Going Rogue.

The next weeks will be bursting with various Palin-flavoured news items and fillers, ranging from knowledge-based and interesting:

When Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage there was a lot of talk about her distinctive way of talkin', you betcha. Heck, she moved to Alaska when she was too young to speak and grew up in the small town of Wasilla, but doggone it, why did she talk like someone from the movie "Fargo"?

Three University of Wisconsin-Madison linguists tackled the conundrum in a research article to be published in the Journal of English Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that happened in the 1930s.

to Frum-penned arch:

Palin supporters have constructed an alternative reality in which their heroine is wildly cheered by the American yeomanry, and despised only by a small coterie of sherry-drinking snobs. No contrary evidence, no matter how overwhelming and uncontradicted, can alter this view: not the collapse in Palin's support in just five weeks in 2008, not the statistical studies that show her as the only vice-presidential nominee in history to have hurt her ticket, not her rampant unpopularity with American women, not her own flinching from a second encounter with the Alaskan electorate.

and finally, the glurge.

The Palin graphic was found at this blog: Pink Sheep of the Family. There are more.

ADDED: fern hill here: I hope you don't mind, dBO, but I'm parking this very useful link on your post. It is Andrew Sullivan's The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Summary Before The Next Round. Lots of lies, lots of links.