Spin, spin, spin! (For some political context, the Conservative-led U.K. coalition government is currently trying to make the most of a national economic situation that's become slightly less dire than it has been for the past three years. So just really dire then. Ergo, it's especially keen to shout about job creation and business innovation. So yay startups!).
This suggested perhaps a slightly less dire climate situation.
The cast, working in conditions that appear to have been only slightly less dire than those portrayed in the film, work together in a grim, convincing improvisatory rhythm.
"Why are we focused on a line, above which nothing happens, set by some technocrats in Washington?" Another 1.2 billion live on between $1.25 and $2 a day, an only slightly less dire form of deprivation.
Meanwhile, a slightly less dire bug caused desktop news feed ads to be counted twice as both organic impressions and paid impressions.
But forecasting economic data isn't like setting a price target on a stock: a slightly less-dire prediction doesn't make anyone happy, and analysts' forecasts don't, obviously, have any impact on the actual data (which is very different from the stock market).
Yuen Low, an analyst at Shore Capital, said the results were "dire, if slightly ahead of expectations".
If information is imperfect and the seller needs to price goods based on the expected willingness to pay by consumers, it may be a better long-term strategy to set the price slightly lower to avoid the dire effects of losing trades by setting the price to high.
Maybe the president would insist on an orderly transition into chapter-11 bankruptcy protection for Chrysler and General Motors Ford, though also in dire trouble, is in slightly better shape.
Zambia and Zimbabwe are in dire trouble, too, and Mozambique and Swaziland, while slightly better off at the moment, will be hard pressed to avoid similar shortages.
