Decisions

I will use my Facebook-free summer to a) read Plato's "Republic" b) read St. Augustine's "Confessions" or c) watch "Family Feud."

Which are the voyages?

Do deleted "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" scenes that wound up in the director's cut count as canon? Not that canon matters anymore.

Angry young, I mean middle-aged, man

Finally got around to watching the "Masterpiece Contemporary" film "Lennon Naked," which languished on my DVR for three years. Most reviews were miserable, but I didn't hate it. My main complaint is that at 46, Christopher Eccleston was much too old to play John Lennon in his 20s. Part of what's moving about the story of Lennon in the 1960s is that he was so young.

The country closet

"What really sets Mr. McAnally apart, though, is his personal life. Mr. McAnally is gay. Country remains American music's bastion of cultural conservatism."

People used to say the military and pro sports were the professional closet's last great bastions. But there also is mainstream country music. Not a single gay star has been unequivocally out in the prime of a sustained career as a country hit maker. Chely Wright and k.d. lang both came out long after their greatest successes on the country charts, and Sugarland's Kristen Hall left the band before it notched its biggest hits.

"Changes do seem to be afoot in Nashville."

Could be. There's a tantalizing plot thread about this on the TV show "Nashville." Bet it's making some people squirm in the Music City.

Just the way he is

"Yeah, I relate to Beethoven."

I don't think Billy Joel is actually likening himself to Beethoven. He's just pointing to a familiar example as he makes an analogy. But it's fun to make fun of Billy Joel for likening himself to Beethoven.

A Facebook-free summer

I anticipate being a busier blogger in the coming days. I am taking the summer off from Facebook, and some of the stuff I would write there I instead will post here. It's 99 big days of a Facebook-free summer, Memorial Day through Labor Day. I hope you read and comment!

Changing keys

In a recent PCMag.com column, John Dvorak writes, of the caps lock key, "This is a key that should be nowhere near any of the normal keys because typists often ACCIDENTALLY HIT IT AND THE NEXT THING THEY KNOW, THEY ARE SCREAMING."

I've heard other calls to demote or do away with caps lock. In the name of all that's holy, no.

Thing is, all but the most accurate typists accidentally hit wrong keys all the time, and not just caps lock. This is in the nature of typing. But good typists realize right away that they have accidentally hit caps lock, because their eyes are where they're supposed to be, on the screen, not the keyboard. Dvorak is describing a scenario that would occur only if the typist were looking at the keyboard. And the typist shouldn't be doing that.

It doesn't make sense to eliminate a key just because someone might accidentally hit it, especially a useful one like caps lock. Under most circumstances, writing in all caps is definitely a no-no, but when it comes to acronyms -- SMERSH, say -- caps lock is the only way to type in all caps and keep all the fingers on the home row, where they belong.

Dvorak is identifying a problem that's less about a particular key and more about a nation of untrained typists. How much more productive would our economy be if everyone who uses a computer learned to touch type properly? Seriously. I learned to touch type from a shareware computer program in 1993. It took about two weeks, and it was excruciating. Then it was over.