9-11-2024
I was cringing as I watched the debate last night. Trump was pushing out lies so fast that Kamala Harris could not even express her amazement fast enough. But the talking heads who analyzed it later were all in agreement that Kamala had won handsomely. (I couldn't handle it, so I went to bed early. And while I was gone, guess what? Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris!)
If the election were to be held today, Trump would be toast.
Kay
As with many persons who have grown up in literate households, all through teens, twenties and thirties, I corrected grammar, spelling and syntax errors everywhere I found them. When I was younger, I was brutal, not caring how I might have embarrassed anyone. Since I had been a teacher, I tried to be more tactful.
But I'm beginning to realize that the problem is becoming enormous. People who post on popular media don't check what they post; they use 'he' as a pronoun for a woman; they leave out words, most commonly articles (the, a, an)—but in some foreign languages I have since come to know that articles actually do not exist (Russian, for instance), so sometimes posts with that sort of omission could originate from people of foreign origin, or indeed from abroad.
Articles on sports, particularly, are incredibly chock full of jargon, and are difficult to read, unless one becomes accustomed to reading sports News. I think that those who aspire to becoming sports commentators learn to talk that way, as a means of establishing their credentials, and naturally write that way as well. It could be that men are not as careful about their language as are women, and most sports writers are men.
Also, I have noticed that sports articles on Fb are filled with prejudice.
My Facebook feed is now redolent with articles about old- time movie stars. Fb loves those sorts of posts, and probably pays whoever posts them something. If I happen to like (or love) those posts, I will soon get a million of them, all poorly written.
Similarly with stories of aging rockers.
This morning, I was scrolling my way through my Fb feed, when I saw an article on Caitlin Clark. (They throw lots of CC posts at me. So predictable.)
This article was unusual. It was easy to understand, it didn't have a ton of statistics, it wasn't filled with abstruse basketball terms that I didn't understand. Best of all, there was hardly any mention about how much money Caitlin Clark is earning the WNBA, something that is common knowledge, but something which I find a little crass.
Instead, there was a lot about how Caitlin's presence in the Indiana Fever has increased attendance at their games, and viewership of women's basketball all over the US and all over the world! (I guess, even if no one talks about money, indirectly it all translated to increased earnings; but this is a little more classy.)
There was some mention of Caitlin's supportive teammates, Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell. (I personally love Boston; she has such a friendly grin, and she is so supportive of her team! She's lovely to have in that team. I can easily understand how hard it must be to have Caitlin show up and make them all look bad. That was at the beginning; pretty soon they were all playing well; I guess just as soon as Caitlin got confident about her teammates.
There was a feature about Caitlin that emphasized that she was an all-round sportsman (or sportswoman), a musician, and a pretty good dancer! They mentioned her favorite popular musicians, but I only caught the name of Drake.
But, alas, that awesome post about Caitlin: it got whisked away, before I could comment and say how well-written it was!
Kay
When I wrote Galactic Voyager, I wanted it to be in our very near future; I wanted all the science to be essentially familiar from high school physics. It was set (to depart Moon orbit) in the 21st Century (I was writing around 1999), which means around this year!
Now, of course, nobody has the will—or the budget, let's be serious—to consider such a thing as to outfit an enormous space vessel 6 miles long, and send it off in an open-ended voyage. I was young and naïve, and I thought it wouldn't be too impossible. If I were to write it now, I would postpone the departure of the Voyager by about a hundred years.
I haven't been able to get a nice cover image for the book. I wanted the view from the rear window of the piloting nacelle (a sort of cabin out on an arm, that stays put, while the ship rotates). I think I could afford to pay for a nice piece of art. I might need two artists: one to draw the Voyager, and the other to draw a few people inside the nacelle, looking out through the window.
K.
