The Dumbing Down of the American Electorate.

As someone with a strong desire to improve my writing, I will, on occasion, visit a website which utilizes a tool for measuring the readability of written text. The website, Readability Score.com, uses several readability algorithms to provide an average score, which should tell what level of education someone will need to be able to read a particular piece of text easily. The website provides scores based on the Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning-Fog, Coleman-Liau Index, and SMOG Index readability tests.

According to another website, the average American adult reads at the 9th-grade level and experts recommend writing documents, intended for the general public, at that level.

On January 10, 2017, maintaining a tradition followed (off and on) by departing Presidents since George Washington, President Barack Obama delivered his Farewell Address to the American people. George Washington's Farewell Address from 1796 is considered by most, to be the Gold Standard for Presidential Farewell Addresses and naturally, writers have compared Obama's address to Washington's.

To compare the two Presidential Farewell Addresses, I copied both and pasted each one onto the Readability Score.com testing algorithm to find out the grade level of each. After testing each, I took a screen shot of the results, which I've posted below. Following today's standard, Obama's text was written at a 9th Grade reading level - par for the average American today. The reading level of Washington's Farewell Address is at a grade level of 18. To understand Washington's address, the reader should have, not only 4 years of college, but an additional 2 years of post graduate study.

As an aside - the reading level of this blog post is 14.7. Maybe that's why I have so few readers.

Grits For Breakfast

In spite of the fact that I was born and raised in the Southern United States, and that I have one branch of ancestors who were Georgia when it was still a British colony, I am not particularly fond of grits. Sure, they're ok - I'll eat grits, but I'd prefer oatmeal or farina. Many Southerners frown upon my preference to put sugar on grits when I do eat them.

Oddly enough, besides fried chicken and okra, grits are one of the few Southern foods readily available in the markets here in Philippines. My wife tells me the name for grits here is lugaw mais; lugaw being porridge and mais, of course is corn.

My wife purchased a bit yesterday and we ate grits for breakfast this morning. It was a nice change.

Et tu, U2? More Trump Derangement Syndrome

In a spectacular display of Trump Derangment syndrome, U2 has decided to delay their upcoming album after Donald Trump's election as POTUS.

Really?

What a load of pretentious, self absorbed twaddle.

U2's guitarist, The Edge (that's not pretentious, is it?) told Rolling Stone that with Trump's election, the world is a different place. Cuz like, you know, like the 80's and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and whatever.

But then again, how seriously can we take a band whose leader believes we should combat ISIS with comedy?

Thank You, Maine.

I'm a big fan of Google Analytics. With it, I can glean a wide range of information about the folks that visit my blog. One example, in 2008, thanks to Analytics, I discovered that someone who I had considered a dear friend was harassing me online via comments left on this blog. Fortunately, most of the information gathered isn't as Earth shattering as that.

In an example of nice things I've learned from Google Analytics, I discovered that my biggest fan appears to be living in the U.S. state of Maine. Of course, I have absolutely no idea who this person (or persons?) is, or how he or she came upon my blog. All I know is that for the past five months or so, I've gotten a hit from someone in Maine nearly every day; 110 visits since August.

Analytics lists six cities in Maine making visits - Saint Albans, Hartland, Etna, Farmington, Orono, and Rumford - although I suspect this is just one individual rather than a group of folks. It's difficult enough imagining I have one fan who keeps up with my ramblings. I'm flattered, to say the least.

So, to my fan in Maine, thank you for taking time to visit my humble blog.

A Return to 'Creative Minority Report'

A year and a half ago, I wrote a post proclaiming that there would be no more 'Creative Monrity Report' for me. At the time of that post, I felt that, although I was still a fan of Matt Archbold's portion, I began to see Pat Archbold as being too anti-Pope Francis for me. I stopped reading their blog at that point.

Since then, I've returned to the blog and have even added a link to CMR onto my blog. I can't remember the exact date of my return, but I felt I should post this update.