One is the difference between the British and American usage of “meant to.” Consider the following two sentences.

This décor is meant to look Egyptian.

The weather is meant to be lovely in Capri this time of year.

The first sentence sounds fine in American English, though an American would be slightly more likely to say “supposed to.” But the second is something an American just wouldn’t say; here only “supposed to” would do (unless one is referring to the gods’ purposes in arranging Capri’s weather). But it sounds quite normal in British English. The difference is that in American English, “meant to” suggests something’s being intended, while “supposed to” can mean either that or what is simply taken to be the case – which is how “meant to” works in British English.

(Actually I think the difference shows up in the first sentence too; my sense is that in American English “This décor is meant to look Egyptian” stresses the intentionality, as if to explain that the Egyptian appearance isn’t an accident.)

The other difference concerns the word “right.” There’s a fair bit of overlap between the British and American uses here, but there are also differences, and the particular one I have in mind is nicely displayed in the following video clip of the opening scene from the original BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. (The scene is also charming in its own right – and incidentally does a nice job of instantly making it visually clear, to readers of the book, which actors are playing which characters.)

Now in American English, if you begin with “Right!” then you have to be responding to something someone else has said; you can’t just start off with it, the way you can in British English. What does work in American English the way “right” works in British English is “okay”; it would sound perfectly natural for an American to begin a meeting with “Okay, let’s get started” – but not with “Right, let’s get started.”

By contrast, “Okay, we shall start” – as opposed to “Okay, let’s get started” – would sound a bit off in American English, but my (fallible) sense is that Alleline’s “we shall start” is not quite natural in British English either; the Alleline character is supposed – and indeed meant – to be something of a pompous ass, and this might be reflected in unnatural speech patterns.

The Guardians of the Universe, the bosses of the Green Lantern Corps, have divided the universe into 3600 sectors, each under the jurisdiction of one (originally) or two (currently) Green Lanterns.

This is obviously absurd. But let’s pause for a moment to consider just how absurd it really is.

Current estimates place the number of galaxies in the universe at somewhere between 100 billion and 500 billion. So let’s say 300 billion. That means that each sector has, on average, about 80 million galaxies in it.

Suppose you’re a Green Lantern scanning your sector for signs of trouble. Suppose further, absurdly, that scanning an entire galaxy takes only one second. At that rate, it will still take you two and a half years to scan your entire sector.

Just watch this video and think about trying to police the entire universe with a force of 3600 (or 7200) cops:

Now back in the 1970s there was some confusion at DC about the scope of the Guardians’ authority; while usually described as the Guardians of the Universe, they were occasionally described instead as merely the Guardians of the Galaxy (not to be confused with Marvel’s super-team of the same name). There was even a silly plot point once where the bad guys removed Earth from the Green Lantern Corps’s jurisdiction by yanking it out of the Milky Way.

This certainly makes more sense, but still not much. The number of stars in the Milky Way is thought to be roughly the same as the number of galaxies in the universe; so it’d still take two and a half years to scan a single sector, if scanning at the rate of one star system per second.

No wonder there’s never a Green Lantern around when you need one.

I wish I could be excited about this. But I found part 1 so lackluster that I haven’t even bought the dvd yet, despite having spent decades fantasising about an Atlas film. (I’ve probably missed my chance to get the now-recalled dvd box with the blurb praising “Ayn Rand’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice.”) Rand is such an intensely cinematic writer, and the film over and over turns away from her cinematic choices (even in cases where constraints of time and budget would have permitted following them) in favour of something less interesting.

Still and all, I’m mildly pleased that the project will continue. I guess I prefer a completed mediocre Atlas adaptation to an uncompleted mediocre Atlas adaptation.

DC is producing a prequel to Watchmen.

What Alan Moore thinks about it.

Why Alan Moore’s reaction is hypocritical.

And if this is what I was writing at the height of my Randian period, I suppose it’s no surprise that I ended up drifting from apostolic purity.

The politerati are all aflutter because GOP party hack Reince Priebus compared our President Incarnate to Francesco Schettino, the cruise ship captain who’s been charged with manslaughter in connection with the recent shipwreck off the coast of Italy.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Priebus’s counterhack on the Democratic side, called it an “unbelievable comparison,” opining that “for the RNC chairman to compare the president of the United States to someone who has been charged with manslaughter shows a dramatic level of insensitivity to the families of those victims.”

I agree. After all, Obama is guilty of actual mass murder against the civilian population of Pakistan. To compare him to someone charged with the lesser offense of manslaughter is dramatically insensitive to the families of Obama’s victims.