Parts of Speaking Publishing

 Just thinking. I'm reading complaints that Bad Bunny, the rapper, is going to sing the half time show at the Super Bowl in Spanish. What an outrage. Imagine, singing music no one can understand in the first place in another language.  So many thoughts.  The Super Bowl is kind of an outrage in general. The commercials, the hype, the violence of football, the manufactured community over a game that has no bearing on 99% of the lives of those watching it. I'm avoiding it, as always.  Now, I don't know Bad Bunny from Bugs Bunny, but questions for him: Why does Bad Bunny, who has a real name of course, a good ol' 4-part Spanish one, go by the name Bad Bunny if he only raps in Spanish?  Shouldn't his name be "Conejito Mal"? (Bad Little Rabbit).  Since he raps in Spanish, it wouldn't be easy to translate raps into English. They would be very different songs because of the rhythm of Spanish and the culturally embedded meanings in rap in general.  Why did the ...

Tom Klingenstein on Higher Education  Although I am reluctant to "buy into" the views of a person with his connections, on this topic I think he has something to say. I have lived and seen some of this, but at the same time this essay is very much oversimplified. Higher Education is not a federal government thing, really, except in terms of student financial aid (which controls A LOT of what we do). It is run by state systems (Georgia has two), private boards, and religious denominations/Catholic Church.  John Dewey's and the German model did have a lot of input toward our current system of education, but so did American pragmatism (workforce development), specialization, growth of the federal government with its tentacles into everything, and the accreditation system (boy, I can talk about that!) There are attempts to return to a "purer" higher education model. They need either independent funding or high tuition, but they are coming to fruition, such as New Co...

Russell Moore on Assisted Suicide Beautiful job. 

I'm sick of that creepy perv Jeffrey Epstein.  If he was your neighbor and not rich and did those things, you'd report him in a heartbeat.  But he was rich (why, will we every know?) and he's supposed to be the object of our attention.  Gosh, he's sickening.  And yet I'll probably read something about him today.  Even more whining about Trump is preferable to this pornography. 

From  https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/how-long-should-this-sentence-be?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9817360e-0427-42cc-8cb1-5cff0ff9351d_1920x1346.jpeg&open=false   I have stopped buying books on writing; I have some of the really good ones. I've been asked to write one myself, but I don't need to choke the world with another book on writing, to paraphrase Annie Dillard. Everyone wants to find the secret sauce, and it doesn't exist in a recipe. It exists in the writing, the practice, the WORK.   The question isn’t how many words a writer employs but how clearly those words relate to the core. Length doesn’t cause problems. Muddled thinking expressed in clumsy writing does. Give a writer 100 words to build a sentence, and they won’t automatically become Faulkner, anymore than limiting a person to 15 makes them Hemingway. The sentence serves the thought and desired effect, not the other way around. You can pile clause up...

 I, for some reason, watched The Night Manager, a series from about nine years ago. I think I was going through a John LeCarre phase. Anyway, I got hooked on this spy story (as I am on Slow Horses but will probably pry myself off of it). The plot is too complicated, but let's just say a British veteran, working the night shift in a Cairo motel, gets recruited to work for British Intelligence to bring down an arms dealer who covers his work with the patina of a peace-loving NGO. He's vile and mean and ready to destroy nations for a buck. Very plot-driven but the main character is charming and you root for him. (route?) So, when the second season finally came around, I'm watching. And I'm disappointed. The same villain is back at it. Come on, did Hugh Laurie need something to do? I guess so. He was too trusting in the first series. Second disappointment, spoiler; the antagonist, a Colombian with his own charity, is the son of the the first one. Too cute, too easy, but it ...