Yearly Archives: 2024

The attack of the singularized plurals 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

English includes many nouns that end in “-um” or “-on” and are pluralized by changing the ending to “-a.” They come from Latin and Greek respectively. Examples include “medium,” “datum,” “ovum,” “criterion,” and “phenomenon.” As with everything else, the language isn’t consistent; we have museums, not musea; morons, not mora; polygons, not polyga. I wouldn’t complain if the language regularized the endings of all these words. “Bacteriums” and “phenomenons” would sound weird at first, but we could get used to it.

What’s happening instead is that people turn the plurals into singulars. With some words, like “data” and “media,” the change has been firmly established. Others are substandard but turn up often, like “a bacteria” or “a phenomena.” Recently I saw a writer friend who should know better talking about “a criteria.” This doesn’t make the words any more regular, since double-pluralizing “medias” or “datas” is still frowned upon. It leaves us with words that are the same in the singular and the plural.
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What really is a theocracy?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged language usage on by

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the overbroad use of the term “Fascism” and what it really was or is. Another political designation that gets freely tossed around is “theocracy.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.” This is too broad; governments of all kinds have claimed that God guides their heads of state. Listen to traditional patriotic songs, and you’ll hear lots of claims that the leaders act under God’s guidance.
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Readercon’s code of conduct

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged conventions fandom science fiction on by

Time to dissect another code of conduct from a fan-run convention. This one’s for Readercon, which is coming up in July in Quincy, Massachusetts. It’s got some of the usual problems but could have been worse.

The most pervasive problem is taking good ideas and inappropriately elevating them to rules. “Moderate the volume of your voice and the expansiveness of your gestures.” How much hand-waving constitutes a violation? “Be willing to learn new things and admit when you’re wrong, including offering apologies.” Is the con going to judge when someone has been proven wrong and mandate an apology? “If you’re not certain someone is enjoying your company, end the interaction yourself.” A lot of fans deal with self-doubt about whether others like them; this rule, if taken seriously, would practically shut down their social interactions.
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Update on Smashwords and Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in News Selling your work and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

Smashwords is now saying that some accounts will be automatically moved to Draft2Digital. A May 1 email says:

On June 1st, we’ll begin automatically migrating some Smashwords author accounts to Draft2Digital. If you desire more control over the migration process, or want to have your account migrated sooner, please complete the brief questionnaire that was previously sent to the email address associated with your Smashwords account.
 
When Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in March 2022, we announced that the integration of the two companies would be completed in three phases, with the final phase involving the migration of Smashwords author/publisher accounts over to Draft2Digital. Given the vast number of Smashwords accounts, the migration process itself must be divided into phases to ensure maximum effectiveness and efficiency.

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A smear and harassment campaign

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged conventions fandom PenguiCon on by

Penguicon 2024 disinvited SF author Patrick Tomlinson after he was targeted by a major online harassment campaign. Yes, that’s right. Penguicon disinvited a program participant for being the victim of harassment. He discusses the convention’s actions on his website, and I’ve confirmed much of what he said from other sources.

What the convention did to him is known as the “heckler’s veto,” though “heckling” is far too mind a term for the stalking campaign against him. It’s often a technique organizers use to get rid of someone they don’t like or find inconvenient. USC cancelled its valedictorian speech by Asna Tabassum because of vague “safety concerns.” The administration never said what dangers concerned them or who, if anyone, was making threats. The Provost’s statement cites “security concerns that rose to the level of credible” but nothing more specific. It subsequently cancelled all commencement speeches. The message USC unintentionally delivered was that threats work.
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Elbphilharmonie concert, May 5, 2024

This entry was posted in Music and tagged Germany music on by

Another “off-topic” post, this one about a wonderful concert I attended while I was in Germany. It was at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg on May 5. That’s a significant date, just two days short of the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

The two pieces were Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw and the Ninth. Alan Gilbert conducted the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Runfunkchor Berlin. Soloists were Susanna Phillips (soprano), Gerhild Romberger (alto), Maximilian Schmitt (tenor), and Michael Nagy (baritone).
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Note on mcgath.com

This entry was posted in Administrative on by

Update: mcgath.com is now hosted by Dreamhost and is working.

I just learned that the SSL certificate on my companion website, mcgath.com, is broken. The problem is with HostGator, which messed it up just a few months ago and then allegedly fixed it. It’s time for me to migrate to a competent hosting company. Unfortunately, due to other stuff I’m dealing with, this will take a couple of weeks.

It should be reasonably safe to click through any warnings, since the site serves only static content and it’s unlikely to be worth anyone’s while to set up a man-in-the-middle attack. Use common sense if you see anything suspicious, naturally.

Villains

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged fiction writing on by

Villains make stories exciting. They add an element of danger, giving the hero an adversary to overcome and the reader someone to hate. But who exactly counts as a villain? Is it any character who does bad things? This question came up in my mind when discussing the question of whether the opera Carmen has a villain. Is it Don Jose? He murders the protagonist. Is it Carmen? She leaves a trail of ruin, but that’s not her intention. Here I’ll put a few thoughts together.

First try: A proper villain does bad things with bad intentions. But do the intentions have to be bad? The classic example of the righteous villain is Javert in Les Miserables. Throughout the novel, he pursues Jean Valjean in the belief that he’s hunting down a dangerous criminal. He can’t grasp that Valjean has greatly changed, and when the truth hits him … well, that’s a spoiler. Is he a villain? Gottesmann in my The Magic Battery is similar, and I had Javert in mind when I created him. He thinks that letting just anybody use magic is too dangerous to allow, and he won’t allow the conviction of an innocent person, but his campaign kills a lot of people.
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Migrating from Smashwords to Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

A few days ago I got an email from Smashwords saying I’m now eligible to migrate my self-publishing account to Draft2Digital. “Uncomplicated” accounts were eligible to migrate in February. Mine must be “complicated,” which surprises me. Maybe it’s because the two Thomas Lorenz novels constitute a series. In any case, if you’re a Smashwords author and think you may have missed the notification, check out the Migration FAQ.

The good news is that Smashwords says your existing links will continue to work. It would have been very annoying if they didn’t. However, it isn’t clear what the benefits are. The FAQ says, “After you update your manuscript through the Draft2Digital interface, only the ePub format will be available to readers.” That sounds like a downgrade. There’s nothing about whether migration will eventually be mandatory. If you have books published on Smashwords, read the information and use your judgment. This article on selfpublishing.com provides information which could help, though it’s a couple of years old. I’m content to drag my feet.

Recollections of Ergo

This entry was posted in History Writing and tagged education history MIT writing on by

Ergo: The Campus Voice of Reason. That was the name of our paper. Like all college students, we were more confident we were right than we should have been, but we stood apart from the crowd. As an organization, we were never “liberal” or “conservative” in the popular sense of the words. Our position was libertarian, strongly influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ergo challenged university administrators, the campus left, politicians, and academics. My association with Ergo helped me to develop a framework of thought that I still go by. My views on what is important and how to achieve it have changed, and so have some of my conclusions, but my basic principles have changed very little.

Ergo came into being during a time called the “sixties,” which lasted from about 1965 to 1975. The founder was J. R. M. Seitz, who allegedly acquired all the parts necessary to build an Atlas missile (except the nuclear warhead) on the open market. It was the time of the Vietnam War and urban riots. It was a time of protests and violence. People marched and occupied buildings. Some thought that totalitarian Communist states were a great idea. Others just wanted the government to stop drafting people and sending them into an undeclared war on the other side of the globe. Once I was punched in the nose, and another time the sweater I was wearing was set on fire. I can’t count the number of times I was called a fascist. Interesting times.
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