Bowie's process

Word count

Jan 11: -- 
my God, how have I left it so long?

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First, the iron would be mixed with nickel and heated to.... Okay, not Bowie the knife maker, although such ideas led me to this (Note, as always, and so also with other images in this post, I have shrank it somewhat.  For a full-size image, follow the link.  For a somewhat larger image, click the image):

I don't mean to make light of David Bowie's passing, but honestly, I never owned an album or CD of his.  Of course, I know Major Tom and his, "We can be heroes" song - that was him, right?

Still, I naturally have respect for the man and his work.  How did he remain relevant for 50 years? What was his process? From Stephen Collins.

Good to know.
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Many science fiction authors of days of yore believed the future would be one of ease for the everyday man.  Okay, at least one author did.  It seemed so obvious that I just accepted it.  Boingboing looks at why this probably won't be the case.  See also Humans need not apply (Youtube link).

The future is difficult to imagine. I am at home in Ontario.  Well, I am at my mother's home, which feels like home when I am in Canada.  I looked at and threw away a lot of old papers, including my elementary school report cards.  I didn't want my son to see how terrible a student I was.  One thing that caught my eye was the low marks I received and commentary on my terrible spelling.

Nowadays, does spelling matter?  For important documents, I use spell check.  For informal docs, notes and chats, bad spelling is a sign of comfort with the other party - "I'm so relaxed in your company that I don't have to overthink my conversation."

Still, I somehow am more relaxed in theory about spelling but spelling errors still leap out at me when I read a book, so it has some value.  A more notable and common group of errors involve grammar and word choice.  They're, their, and there. "My family aren't..."  Spelling seems to be an easy problem for computers to solve; grammar less so.  How will education change to address this?  Will people simply change in their tolerances?  In teaching ESL, I simultaneously note every absent 'a' and 'the' and find I have no trouble understanding the text.  If it doesn't degrade understanding, perhaps the new frontier of tolerance will be grammar variance.

Does my reader(s?) have any predictions for the future?  Actionable ones we can make money on or even include in art so we look like prophets in ten or twenty years (or five)?
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Periodic Table Battleship. Via Boredpanda.
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Traveling as I am, I find it difficult to listen to podcasts.  This discussion with David Ben looks like it would be interesting.  Ben's personal website is here.
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ESL teaching time savers.  Gotta say, this link is the least related to my blog's topic.