Can Email Be Far Behind

One of my colleagues at work and I had a friendly, ongoing difference of opinion. I said, “Web site,” and she said, “website.” Every time we’d edit work for each other, I would correct her “website” and she would mark my “Web site.” And I would say, “I follow the Associated Press Stylebook (dubbed the Journalist's 'Bible').” To which she’d reply, “It’s website.”

Well, in case you are not a language nerd (credit Washington Post writer Rob Pegoraro with that term), you might have missed the hoopla over the AP’s decision a couple of weeks ago to change to “website.” Faster Forward writer Pegoraro wrote, “My instinctive reaction is to stick with traditional practice, but I'm not completely sure what to think.”

A couple of days after I read the news about the switch, I printed out a post about the change and left a copy on my colleague’s desk with a note: “I guess I’ll be changing to website.” However, I didn’t say she was right. Or that I liked it.

Poynter has a good post on the topic.

Who You Gonna Believe

Running in to the Jewel for a few random items like whole milk for Nicolas (he’s visiting later today while his mom and dad attend a wedding in Chicago), I took a few moments to glance at the tabloids lining the checkout lane. Wow, I am worried. According to the Globe, President Obama has lung cancer. Republican right-winger Sarah Palin might ought to stay closer to home, because one tab reports her husband is cheating on her. Or did I get that wrong, and she cheated on him?

Ever since the National Enquirer got it right when it broke news of John Edwards’ affair, I look at these salacious pubs with a different eye. Could they be right? Anyway, they make fodder for speculation and help pass the time in line. Happy Saturday!

All the World is a Twitter

Can you keep up with Facebook, MySpace, Eons, LinkedIn and more? I do not think I can. However, I just signed up for Twitter, but I doubt I will remember to post on the fad-driven keep-it-simple social networking Web site.

I sort of had to get on Facebook since my boss charged me with serving as an administrator for our nonprofit's presence. I was already on LinkedIn but have no real idea why except my daughter-in-law suggested it.

Eons is probably more my speed since it is for Baby Boomers and I am certainly one of those.

Who knows what will come up next but according to Twitter I was thinking about going for a walk. That does sound healthier than sitting at the computer wasting time.

Whoopi-Do We Are Still Here

The world's biggest physics experiment has succeeded in its first major test as a beam of protons was successfully fired all the way around a 17-mile tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border. From the AP

You might have caught a bit about the event on the evening news when there was talk that it could possibly cause our planet to implode into a black hole. Something like that—I am not a physics person. Well, it obviously didn’t, and the “end of the worlders” can go back to worrying.

Here in my new hometown of Batavia, we know a thing or two about energy. Batavia was once home to windmill manufacturers and we have windmills all over the place. But the biggest and finest claim for the City of Energy is Fermilab, named for Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, one of the most highly regarded physicists of the atomic age.

I reckon they’re smashing atoms and accelerating and colliding them as well, and so far everything here in Batavia seems to be just fine, and I am sure they will be fine in Geneva (Switzerland, not Illinois' Geneva which is just up the road from Batavia) too. Ahhh! We have escaped another “Chicken Little” scare.

Harry Potter Comes of Age

One of my favorite writers beat me to the punch. Stephen King, writing in the July 13 issue of Entertainment Weekly, took on the subject of Harry Potter.

J. K. Rowling is about to conclude her series of books featuring the boy with the lightning strike scar. In case you’ve been in the wilds of Mongolia for the last 10 years, I’ll give you the lowdown. Harry Potter and his creator can claim credit for turning on a whole generation of young people, particularly boys, to reading for pleasure. Millennials (that’s what you call the generation after GenX) like son Scott grew up with Harry. Along the way, the books stirred the censorship pot of many a right-wing religious fundamentalist afraid that by reading the books her child would suddenly become a devotee and practitioner of witchcraft. I've worried a lot about my son but never about him becoming a witch.

In Goodbye, Harry, Mr. King writes:

“When it comes to Harry, part of me—a fairly large part, actually—can hardly bear to say goodbye . . . And I’m a damn Muggle! Think how it must be for all the kids who were 8 when Harry debuted in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone . . . Those kids are now 18, and when they close the final book, they will be in some measure closing the book on their own childhoods—magic summers spent in the porch swing, or reading under the covers at camp with flashlights in hand, or listening to Jim Dale’s recordings on long drives to see Grandma in Cincinnati or Uncle Bob in Wichita.”

Long ago, I started reading the first Harry Potter to Scott. I suppose we were maybe a quarter of the way through when the elementary schooler, not an early wonder-kid reader by any means, took over for himself. Nearly every night for the next 10 years there’d be a Harry Potter book in his bed—not always the latest since he took to rereading the books. And in the mornings when I’d wake him for school, there it’d be next to him when he awoke. While his interests in literature expanded, the one constant was the love he had for Harry Potter.

We both read the EW article and I asked Scott, “How many times DID you read Harry Potter?” “To be honest, I read the first book at least 20 times and the others 10 times each,” he answered with a laugh.

Mr. King thinks “Rowling will almost certainly go on to other works, and they may be terrific, but it won’t be quite the same, and I’m sure she knows that.”

I don’t know, Stephen. Back many years ago, that little lady in Alabama wrote just one book, and you know, it was one damn, fine one. For years people wondered when Harper Lee was going to publish another one. To this day she’s seen no need to bother. I have to think J. K. Rowling did just fine with Harry Potter, just as Ms. Lee did with To Kill a Mockingbird.

Live Free or Die Hard

I so rarely go to the movies these days but trudged along yesterday with the guys for the new Bruce Willis action movie, Live Free or Die Hard. Short on plot; long on action just like a summer movie should be. Salon.com has a review if you want more details, but I wanted to write about a scene in the movie that I’m still thinking about this morning.

You know the Mac guy from the Apple Computer ads? Justin Long’s his name and he plays a geeky computer hacker-type Bruce is charged with delivering to the FBI to avert an attack on all U.S. technological systems: transportation, Wall Street, etc. by cyber-terrorists. In between fending off the bad guys and trying to save the day, Bruce listens as Apple Guy gets all philosophical on him and says, “It’s all controlled and manipulated,” or something like that. I wasn’t taking notes. They were watching the news as the terrorists hacked into broadcast feeds to deliver their evil message.What Apple Guy was referring to was what we are fed as news by the corporate media.

And I thought, maybe he’s right. Maybe if we watch enough of stories covering Anna Nichol Smith and Paris Hilton or Ann Coulter’s screeching, we won’t notice what’s happening that really matters. Could TV be the “opiate of the people?” And are we getting what we deserve?