17 April 2013

Birthdays
Jennifer Garner b. 1972
Henry Ian Cusick b. 1967
Sean Bean b. 1959
Kristine Sutherland b. 1955

Another interesting birthday list. If I were selecting on the basis of most important career in genre, Sean Bean from Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones would probably get the nod, but as I often do, I'm going with The Cute Girl. Mr. Cusick's best known work in the genre is on Lost and Ms. Sutherland played Buffy's mom.

Prediction: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Predictor: John Elfreth Watkins in The Ladies' Home Journal published 1900

Reality: Not a sterling effort this time around. With all the changes English has been through, cleaning up spelling has not been one of them.The "condensed words and condensed ideas" is reminiscent of Orwell's Newspeak. We do abbreviate and use acronyms more than was done as hundred years ago and few modern writers show off their vocabulary like many did in the past, so he gets some partial credit there.

Putting English first in usage isn't right in terms of native speakers, as it ranks behind Mandarin and Spanish. If we include people who have English as a second language, it jumps over Spanish into second place. Putting Russian in second place was an odd choice in 1900. At that time, Russia was still ruled by the czar and was considered a backward country by European standards. Watkins doesn't elaborate on why he thought they would have a big century of growth.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
 
Thursday is Arthur C. Clarke Day and I have a confession. With Heinlein and Clarke, I put a lot of their accurate stuff in early and now we are down to the scraps. The middle of the line-up this week doesn't acquit itself very well.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!