"Just scanning headlines, race would be a defensible presumption"
Absolutely! Practically inescapable in fact. I wouldn't have blamed people for not even realising that anybody but the Asian women had been killed if they just scanned headlines or even read some of the articles. The erasure of the other victims was truly shocking.
"Just scanning headlines, race would be a defensible presumption"
Absolutely! Practically inescapable in fact. I wouldn't have blamed people for not even realising that anybody but the Asian women had been killed if they just scanned headlines or even read some of the articles. The erasure of the other victims was truly shocking.
Based on the headlines, it would have been silly not to ponder a racist motive. But we had other information so quickly afterwards that made a racist motive unlikely. Though we also had people like Trevor Noah outright lying about what Long had said, which didn't help matters.
I wonder sometimes if reading is going to be one of those phenomena like the middle class, a brief flowering that dies out.
Before the printing press books were copied by hand, wasting thousands of lives in the priesthood copying texts by candlelight. Then came printing, and newspapers and magazines and glorious books. Literacy went from almost unknown to common.
Now it seems to be fading. A brief care about grammar is giving way to pidgin speech and emoji, sentence structure is seen as effete. Your and you're are interchangeable.
In my industry most workers and much smarter than average and now most of them don't read. In the late 19th century writing was much more sophisticated than it is now. That we are losing ground in literacy is something I don't need to detail.
That most people read about this mass shooting and never read past the headline is no longer surprising. I confess that I thought it a racist crime for a few seconds but then I read the actual story and the rest and knew that presumption to be artifactual.
The number of people who never read a book after their formal education is astonishing. When my granddaughter told me that "the book is always better than the movie" it was one of my happy moments.
I can't imagine who I would be without the influence of reading. We may be part of a dying breed.
The "Silence of the Lambs" movie was much better than the book. The book had too many distracting subplots that the movie chopped out. For example, Clarice's boss at the FBI, played by Scott Glen, had a wife dying of cancer while Clarice pursued Buffalo Bill. It added nothing to the story.
But, yeah, I've read that the average American reads one book per year. So for someone like me who reads about a hundred there are 99 people who don't read books at all.
This is pretty obvious on social networks, and on signs at Trump rallies.
I saw a picture from a rally on the other side; one sign read
"Look at all the correctly-spelled signs." I howled.
All true. There are always exceptions. But in general, we clearly agree.
I am mildly dyslexic. I often don't notice misspellings since I have no difficulty reading misspelled words. It probably contributed to my tendency to not noticing typos or my own words that end up misspelled. In the case of signs carried in rallies and marches, you'd think that someone in the group would say, "Dude, that sign makes us look like dumb shits!" (In some cases, justifiably).
I almost envy you that. A lot of reading is painful for me. I've mentioned the singular "they" many times. I'll see something like "brutalness" and I get mad and want to email the writer, "it's BRUTALITY, dammit!"
And I am tired of being lectured that "language evolves," as if there is no such thing as a mistake.
Oh, I don't confuse mistakes and purposeful destruction of clear meaning, which irritates me more than error.
Books like "1984" and "Anthem" were meant to be a cautionary about the dystopia which follows the enforcement of language intended to prevent logical thought. They are now playbooks for those who prefer a dumbed down thoughtless society.
"Just scanning headlines, race would be a defensible presumption"
Absolutely! Practically inescapable in fact. I wouldn't have blamed people for not even realising that anybody but the Asian women had been killed if they just scanned headlines or even read some of the articles. The erasure of the other victims was truly shocking.
Based on the headlines, it would have been silly not to ponder a racist motive. But we had other information so quickly afterwards that made a racist motive unlikely. Though we also had people like Trevor Noah outright lying about what Long had said, which didn't help matters.
I wonder sometimes if reading is going to be one of those phenomena like the middle class, a brief flowering that dies out.
Before the printing press books were copied by hand, wasting thousands of lives in the priesthood copying texts by candlelight. Then came printing, and newspapers and magazines and glorious books. Literacy went from almost unknown to common.
Now it seems to be fading. A brief care about grammar is giving way to pidgin speech and emoji, sentence structure is seen as effete. Your and you're are interchangeable.
In my industry most workers and much smarter than average and now most of them don't read. In the late 19th century writing was much more sophisticated than it is now. That we are losing ground in literacy is something I don't need to detail.
That most people read about this mass shooting and never read past the headline is no longer surprising. I confess that I thought it a racist crime for a few seconds but then I read the actual story and the rest and knew that presumption to be artifactual.
I'm a reader. I feel like a dying breed.
The number of people who never read a book after their formal education is astonishing. When my granddaughter told me that "the book is always better than the movie" it was one of my happy moments.
I can't imagine who I would be without the influence of reading. We may be part of a dying breed.
The "Silence of the Lambs" movie was much better than the book. The book had too many distracting subplots that the movie chopped out. For example, Clarice's boss at the FBI, played by Scott Glen, had a wife dying of cancer while Clarice pursued Buffalo Bill. It added nothing to the story.
But, yeah, I've read that the average American reads one book per year. So for someone like me who reads about a hundred there are 99 people who don't read books at all.
This is pretty obvious on social networks, and on signs at Trump rallies.
I saw a picture from a rally on the other side; one sign read
"Look at all the correctly-spelled signs." I howled.
All true. There are always exceptions. But in general, we clearly agree.
I am mildly dyslexic. I often don't notice misspellings since I have no difficulty reading misspelled words. It probably contributed to my tendency to not noticing typos or my own words that end up misspelled. In the case of signs carried in rallies and marches, you'd think that someone in the group would say, "Dude, that sign makes us look like dumb shits!" (In some cases, justifiably).
<snip> putting that in an email.
I almost envy you that. A lot of reading is painful for me. I've mentioned the singular "they" many times. I'll see something like "brutalness" and I get mad and want to email the writer, "it's BRUTALITY, dammit!"
And I am tired of being lectured that "language evolves," as if there is no such thing as a mistake.
Oh, I don't confuse mistakes and purposeful destruction of clear meaning, which irritates me more than error.
Books like "1984" and "Anthem" were meant to be a cautionary about the dystopia which follows the enforcement of language intended to prevent logical thought. They are now playbooks for those who prefer a dumbed down thoughtless society.