Life's contents

I watched the War Dogs movie today and heard a really true line from it.  The setting was a funeral in the movie.  The priest conducting the funeral began the graveside speech with "Life does not come with a table of contents.  Each new chapter is a gift."  The priest went on to describe the man's chapters of life.

Well said whoever the script writer was.  I didn't stay to see the credits, so I don't know who to give credit to.  I like the analogy because some changes in our lives are abrupt, so the chapters come to an end in the same manner, and it is easy to see the next chapter.  Other parts of our lives blend more naturally into each other, but still chapters are discernible because some of the characteristics of the chapters change only slightly.

And the part about each new chapter being a gift is really true because the events in our lives define us.  They become who we are, how we identify ourselves.  Those changes are gifts to us, and we impart that gift as we see fit to the people in our worlds.

And how true is it that Life doesn't come with a table of contents?  Absolutely right.  I haven't ever thought to do it, but I might someday.  I should sit down and write the chapter titles to the chapters of my life and create a table of contents.  It just might help me see the gifts that have been delivered to me by life.

Good performance

Finding a good plumber and a good car mechanic are two of the very hardest searches you can make.  They have a less than decent reputation.  There's a reason for that.

Over the last 5 years I have had to locate a mechanic and plumber because I lost the ones I had been using.  I have been to 6 mechanics and finally I have found one, two actually, but one is farther from my house than the other.  I have this rule when I take a car in.  If I have a mechanical problem that I didn't have before taking the car in, I will not return.  Even if the problem that surfaces is related to the one I took the car in for, I still don't return.

I have had less luck with plumbers.  My rule is the same, so the fact that I still am looking for one tells me that that profession my have fewer honest souls working in it.

I think there are several factors that make the people in professions the way they are, but one is the level of incentive to work.  Plumbers seem to be in a perpetual state of "just passing through" and they need their jobs just to eat for the time being.  I haven't ever met one who really liked what he was doing.  Even the plumbers who have their own business seem to have resigned themselves to doing what they know to do rather than enjoying what they do.

I appreciate more and more the people who do what they both know and enjoy.  People are good at what they do when they enjoy solving all the problems that crop up while they are performing their profession.  I truly hope that people see in my work both the knowledge it takes to perform it and the enjoyment I get from sharing that service with those who need it.

Cutting out paths

What do most people really choose?  Paths that lead to success?  Hardly.  That is because there is challenge, hardship, long hours, inconvenience, sacrifice, and willingness to trade off important times and events.  Most people will go only so far down the road to success.   At some point they turn back since they follow the path of least resistance, not the growth characteristics listed above.

People who do choose success know the path by heart.  They spent night hours to accomplish some of the tasks along the way.  They gave up a weekend or two of leisure to make the next goal.  They traded off some of their children's activities for a time to totally enjoy them at a future point.  They didn't shrink back from chores that were more than difficult in order to learn how to clear the next hurdle.  They know how to lead because they can tell you where the mines are along the path that can kill you.  They also know that you can't get where they are because you are unwilling to go very far down the path.

My admiration goes out to people who know the way.  Frauds and wannabes are easy to spot.  They turn from inconvenience and sacrifice at the drop of a hat.  Those who have been halfway can only rise to half of the challenges.  And conversations with the uninitiated to provide insight, get put off because the foundation for such insight is lacking.  I will walk with those who glide ahead providing light for my path.

Raging storm

I don't think that anyone expects to hear a grown child angrily yell at his or her parents that they are responsible for the messed up life they live or hear specific charges in the crassest terms available that the parents failed at some of the basic duties in his/her upbringing.

The scene was a storm of words by the child - total outrage.  The father tried to speak to say that the memories presented didn't represent his own memory of the particular situations.  The mother was taken completely off-guard, but managed to say she was sorry the child felt so strongly about her bad memories and apologized for the less than 20/20 vision in raising her child.

Storms pass, most of the time without damage, and usually come again from predictable directions.  But it's still a shame that a child would vent such venom against those who so lovingly cared for her during the time when a child has little memory.

I still play it

Growing up, I heard the word ain't very little because it was stigmatized speech.  English teachers actively taught against its use, even saying that it wasn't listed as a word in the dictionary.  Twenty years later I began hearing it more often.  I think there were two reasons for that, one of them not being that English teachers had destigmatized it.  First, my circle widened greatly, and I was exposed to a greater diversity of people.  Second, there was a movement among linguists against the prescriptive nature of language and in favor of describing the varieties of language found.  Sociolinguists in particular began referring to standard English as presitge English.  The war was on.

I still don't hear it that often so when I do hear it, ain't is noticed.  I take note of the people who use it and the situations in which it is heard.  As far as memory goes, the amount of use and the situations of use are the same as when I was growing up.  I also understand a language principle much better.  Whatever our speech was as a youth tends to return after age 40, after one's ambition in the workplace has begun to subside.  The term "linguistic marketplace" was coined in the 1970s to speak of the effect of marketplace on one's economic situation in society.  By the time the next decade arrives there is a comfort level in life that one has achieved about all that is going to be achieved in a person's economic circumstances.  It is then, when people regress to using ain't if they used it as a child and teenager.

I never used it in my youth, so I still don't.  It's not a part of my psyche of being comfortable, and I never had to fight against it during my most ambitious years to get ahead with my money.   So, when I hear it from adults, I know it marked them in their youths, and it helps identify them as being from certain areas and educational levels.  Language is still a game, you know.  And I still play it.

"Place" for learning

There is so much available on the internet that it has become a virtual world log of everything that happens (and that has happened).  It has much to offer for any profession that to ignore it would be certain death of the profession.

And if I were a student in this modern world, I would seriously consider the handicap that a schoolroom represents.  I can find anything I could possibly want to learn in the virtual world.  Some might say schoolrooms offer the teacher/student relationship as a way of providing guidance and discipline.  I would like to see a study on that because I think it is not true.  They might say that schoolrooms offer the core body of knowledge by way of a textbook as a base for progressively learning what lies at the heart of being a good American citizen.  That statement is false on its face since textbooks are the most restrictive way to learn the basics, and the discipline of the student is relied upon to read it.  And some might say schoolrooms put in place the social development necessary to relate well to others in the world.  Given the fact that the wealthy don't follow this advice, that the poor don't follow this advice, that immigrant children don't follow this advice and that military "brats" don't follow this advice, it seems narrowly applicable to middle class families who live in one place mostly.

I would seriously consider, and probably would follow a path of meaning to me so that I could accomplish my desired goals.  The internet would provide unrestricted access to my desired goals, would change as I change or as my goals would change, and would allow access to many who want the same for themselves from any country in the world.

Really, what is a schoolroom for?

Pesky comments

I find it always amazing the types of matters people divide into male and female characteristics.  Yesterday I submitted some paperwork for a report to be compiled.  The papers weren't divided the way the woman taking the reports was thinking they should be divided.  There were not any instructions on how to submit the papers.  I didn't really know the woman other than to have seen her a few times in passing.  I couldn't read her mind.  So, I just divided the papers in the way I thought they should be. (This would have been a perfect environment for an experiment, but it wasn't one.)

The comment I received from the lady was "You need to divide the papers into two groups."

"I did," I said.  I explained the way they were divided.

"Men!" she replied.  The aide that worked with her took the papers, handed them back to me, and asked for me to clip the papers together that belonged together.  Who would've known!  Simple solution, but one that was customary to her, not to me.  I have never thought of, mainly because I haven't seen evidence for, a man's characteristic to be associated in any way to how groupings of papers should be divided into two recognizable stacks.

Language - yes.  Language has features that men and women used separately from each other.  Society's assignments of expected roles in social groupings - yes.  Role assignments are common across the world.  Types of jobs women and men decide on - yes.  Jobs can follow society's expectations or typical interests of men and women when a majority follow those featured interests.  But how papers should be divided - never.

I guess I should take the woman's response and just answer with "Women!" But I won't because how papers are divided is more relevant to personality, experience, formality level, and incentive than to gender feature.  So, I'll chalk the experience up to a difference in our experience of life, setting, and incentive level.  I'll be able to let the matter go without another thought.

Nothing but expletives

My sister-in-law wanted me to meet a new acquaintance of hers for all her own reasons, but because she thought her friend was similar in her approach to analyzing people's motives.  So I went.

The conversation went well through the greetings part.  We sat down at a table and began to talk.  I thought we would be having a collegial time to talk, but within the first 5 minutes of the conversation, it became clear that my sister-in-law's friend wanted to analyze me.

I have a standard MO for those who desire to do such a thing, so I went into that mode immediately.  I also decided to redirect at the first available opportunity.  When I did so, I did it by trying to identify with her through knowledge of someone of notoriety at her university.  She began to deemphasize the man's importance and to once again try to initiate analyzing me.

I soon excused myself.  My sister-in-law and I haven't spoken in the nearly 3 months from that time for deliberate reasons on my part, but when that dialog happens to spark itself again, I have something I want to offer her before we carry forward our own give and take.

Expletive is the word I'm thinking of starting with.

Nothing but decaying dung.

Together one

Brave New World was one of the first fiction books to incorporate the idea of a one world government.  Since that time the idea has surfaced many more times, and increasingly so in books of the last 25 years.  I am an advocate of such a thing happening, and I try to speak about it on every occasion that halfway presents itself.

About a month ago, I couldn't help but notice an information system for students of a political science class that included a whole section on globalization.  I say information system rather than textbook because the section was in an online, app controlled section reachable by phone, tablet, or computer accessible for students by a school offering the class.  Nothing was offered to the students in the way of paper and print, only online sources and resources.

If anything can begin to bring about a global civilization, it will be the internet for sure.  It allows immediacy and a degree of transparency and authenticity.  The world would have to be seen as one place before anyone would consider coming together.  The development of seeing such a section in a political science class information system encourages me.  It may take another 75-100 years.  But, I'm optimistic.  The young people over the last year that I have talked to from about 20 different countries have certainly bolstered the idea as well.  Viva the planet coming together!

One-up

It was an unprecedented phenomenon for me.  I went to a taco place today about 3 miles from my house at 7 in the evening.  It was still registering 100 degrees on my car thermostat.  That's not the phenomenon, though.  Many days are 100 or more  in Texas.  However, it was 7:00.  I was there for about 10 minutes, then made the trip home.

Now a person would think that, if anything, the temperature would take a degree south the longer time went by into the evening.  Oh, no.  As I went the three miles home, the temperature moved north to 101 degrees.  No joke.  On the way down - all the same temperature.  On the return trip - up one.

If I apply this to life, I know there's a direct analogy.  Often at work just when you think some crisis or pressurized matter is just about over - it's in the waning stages - then, yes, something prolongs it and you enter the one-up phase of the issue.

I remember a time when a man wanted something for an individual that I had denied to that person.  He came into my office wearing a gun around his waist, which he had never done before.  He asked that I change my mind.  A few days passed.  I thought the whole episode was over.  But no, I was directly accosted by the person I had denied earlier in a place where he had about 120 seconds to do anything before people around would notice anything out of order.  Close call.  He backed down after a minute (literally) and left.

Things can heat up in a hurry, but it generally takes a while for heat to subside.  I learned that then.  I still know it now for there were other times.  But the unexpected one-up phase from something intense is rare.

Another viewpoint

I spoke with a young man from Nepal today.  He was proud of his heritage and wanted to return in the near future to help his country.  He really missed his way of life there.  Mostly he missed the slower paced way of life.  He mentioned that he didn't want to try to keep up with the frenetic workday pace of the U.S.

Among other things, he also mentioned that young people here were on their own way too early in life.  Young people in Nepal stay with their parents into their early 30s.  That way they are sure to have a stable life when they leave home.  The young man thought the family structure and the work world would be better off if people didn't feel pressure to leave their homes at age 18.

The Nepali young man, 23, had already received his university education in his country, but the U.S. doesn't accept foreign university work as a general rule if a student arrives and wants to take graduate work here.  So, the young man was having to start again with his education in the U.S.  We talked at length.  He was good-hearted since he took an overnight train to the earthquake area of Nepal to help people there rebuild their earthly possessions and their lives.  He had already participated in government primaries for elections at his young age.

I try to learn things from people from other countries.  From this Nepali young man, I learned that there was a way to conduct one's life in a fashion that was slower-paced, yet enough to get things done.  And, perhaps, that family expectations about children shouldn't have to be drawn from what is the norm in a country.  I have not worried about that too very much after age 40, but to the extent that I ever did, I have learned that the U.S. norms shouldn't rule my own expectations.

Sounding wistful

There's a song I heard recently called Dear Younger Self.  I remember seeing a book title about a year ago with about the same title.  I guess the thought has a good sentiment.  But, it sounds to me to be a bit wistful since the impossibility of this thought cannot be overcome except in science fiction.

The song goes into how the composer should inform himself of how the world really works and of true values masked by a hurried life.  I don't know why such a person wants to settle for writing a song to a younger self when he has about 30 years left on his full life.  He might want to wait until he has gained about 20 more years of wisdom before he write that letter.

Maturity is a process.  People have tried to speed it up.  The phrase wise beyond her (his) years exists because of the rarity of seeing such a thing.  People can't really circumvent it.  Even for those wise beyond their years, the wisdom is usually not followed by matching actions.  They turn out to be people who know platitudes, but don't have the life's story to support their so-called wisdom.

You just have to wait for it.  Maturity is beautiful to see when it happens, but pushing it or imagining to see it won't allow for it to happen.  Embracing each phase in the maturation process is what everyone does naturally, so to expect otherwise is nothing but vanity, perhaps self-aggrandizement.

That makes the Beatles' song of old pretty accurate, "Speaking words of wisdom - let it be."

24/7/365

NASA released a one-year continuous time lapse of the Earth from a point approximately 1 million miles from the Earth between it and the sun.  They spliced together 365 days worth of time lapse from shots of the Earth taken every two hours.  It was fascinating to see the cloud patterns and the wobble of the Earth slightly from the video.  The Earth didn't look quite as vibrantly blue as the famous picture taken from the Apollo 11 in 1969.  But, it was still noticeably blue against the backdrop of the blackness of space.

I am always amazed at the different look of the Earth in space as opposed to the shots NASA releases of other planets by space probes.  Anyone arriving in our galaxy from elsewhere would certainly notice it too.  It is inviting to see such vast blue oceans, cloud patterns, and land masses.  And I can see why the area of the Egyptian pyramids would have been singled out after looking at the planet from a million miles away.  It is a center point on the Earth that is almost always visible.  Clouds rarely cover the area.

The video, I'm sure, will spawn many thoughts after getting to see it.  I'm glad to be alive at this time and place in space/time.

Vintage

I read an article about 5 years ago by a History scholar.  The article wasn't about history, however, but about teachers of history.  He had conducted research and was reporting on the way history professors presented their material in the classroom.  Particularly, he compared the organizational patterns of their material as it was presented to students.  He found that professors with 10 years or more could easily move between the connection points (the episodes making up an event) than the professors with fewer years.

That finding seems like a no-brainer on the surface.  However, one reason he used professors in his research and not other kinds of teachers, such as high school teachers, is that the university teacher is considered an expert in the field.  They should be the ones to make connections within an event with ease because of the sheer amount of information they have at their disposal.  It would appear that more information would translate into ability to make connections that less information would prohibit.  Not so.  The experience of using the information in different settings, over time, with different kinds of personalities, and in repetition after reflection influences the effectiveness of the types of connections professors are able to make.

I thought of that study when a language teacher I spoke to last week mentioned that she had a student learning English who could not understand the Subject-Verb-Object order of English enough to produce grammatically correct sentences.  She was frustrated with him and offered expletives about his personality, which she had attributed to the reason for his lack of understanding.  As it turns out, the teacher was one without 10 years of teaching experience, less experience with a variety of languages (even though she was bilingual), and without exposure to the backgrounds of people from the area of the world the student was from or to the nature of the language the student spoke which used a reverse phrase order in use of headwords.

What is true with wine is true with humans, too.  The flavors of new wine and vintage wine are very different.  Vintage wines are so robust with flavor.

Date stamped

I remember talking with my college roommate about a decade or more ago about some research in my field that applied to his profession of counseling.  The published articles were about gender and language.  We specifically talked about the feminine characteristics of the "counseling session" as it existed at that time.  Years have intervened since then, so I thought that maybe the ideas from that time had been thought about more by those teaching counseling in the universities.

Until today... I saw a man who has been peripherally involved in counseling.  He filmed an interview with a female author because he liked a book that she had written.  His introduction to the filmed interview included a comment for men to listen because this woman was saying things that would help both men and women.

First, if a man interviews a woman and feels the need to tell men in his audience not to tune out a message because the messenger is a woman, I know his psyche is stuck somewhere in a world before 1975.  That's never a good sign for up-to-the-minute information.  Second, if a man feels the need to suggest to other men who are already voluntarily listening to a filmed video clip that they need to listen, the man has a control issue or a low self esteem without going further.  I listened critically from that point on because his issue is not mine.  Third, if a man recommends a book that is based on anything close to a psychological premise and is written by a woman, I know he is thinking that the information is differently formatted from a male's general organizing pattern.  It is a signal that information is going to be based on personal experience without taking personality into account, and and it pervades what will be said.

My expectations didn't let me down.  I heard the woman speaking give a lot of personal experience, make mostly generalizations about transferrence of her experience to the audience at large, and no allowances were made for differing personalities among people.  The experience left me high and dry. While I am pretty sure universities have moved down the time continuum in how they teach psychology today, it was clear this man and woman were stuck in a time zone prior to the modern age.  Language acts as a date/time stamp on an event.  Fortunately, for this one, the amount of time was short, considering the context.  I escaped with my life this time.

Tentative assertion

What I absolutely eschew is a person who doesn't think something is true because he or she hasn't thought through the issue enough to consider the possibility that what has been said can be true.  I think it is also true that a certain failure of exposure to scientific inquiry makes one a little arrogant in what he or she does know.

The discussion was about the typologies of the world's languages.  Mostly it is true that about any aspect of a language that a person could think of in communicating to someone else in a standard way has been tried and/or is represented in the world's languages.  Typology is about the patterns of a language, generally speaking.  While it is true that languages have a dominant pattern for making statements, there are a number of different combinations languages have to do the work of questions, negation, emphatics, and other aspects.  In English S(ubject)/V(erb)/O(bject) is the dominant pattern even though other patterns do exist.

So, when I made the statement that Spanish had an OSV pattern in it, a person said he knew Spanish fluently and it wasn't so.  Well, you know what my next move would be.  And as it turns out, there are examples of and OSV pattern said as acceptable Spanish.  What the person didn't know were the principles of language.  He knew Spanish very well without a doubt because he was married to a native Spanish speaker.  He knew German well and had exposure to Vietnamese, so he had a good sense of language.  But, studying languages more analytically could have helped his cause.

Yo no voy a comer las naranjas, pero las manzanas, si, mama va a comer.     SVO + conj + OVS
I won't eat oranges, but apples, yes, mom will eat.     SVO + conj + OVS

He seemed a little surprised, but acknowledged the pattern's grammaticality.  I used to find myself in his position more times than I would like to admit when I was younger and had less ability to analyze language.  I am still wrong sometimes even now, but the difference might be that if I know I am on shaky  ground, I am much more tentative in making assertions.  I know the difference between when I have science on my side and when I don't.

In the shadow of bravery

I admire bravery wherever I see it.  I spoke with a woman from Pakistan today who had come to the U.S. (legally) to get her education.  She wants to become a teacher because she hurts for her country's female population.  She knows that her countrymen routinely ignore half of their population when they educate their young people.  She wants things to be different.

That's not the bravery part.  The courageous act she wants to perform is to return with a highly respected education from this country and teach young women and girls about math, science, commerce, economics, and other subjects that would enhance their understanding of quality living.  She knows that many of the men who run the country don't share this vision in the least.  And she knows those men would kill someone who tried to change the status quo.  She still wants to educate young women because she has daughters herself and wants them to have a better life.

I don't know if I possess this kind of bravery.  I try to take new paths sometimes, but I usually try to work within a framework to get things done diplomatically or politically.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have been courageous about going against the status quo.  And that makes me genuinely admire this woman who might have to face down an imminent threat on her life one day in the not so distant future.

Billboard words

I was getting my hair cut.  The stylist in the neighboring chair was carrying on a conversation with her customer.   I wasn't paying attention too closely, but I did overhear her say, "He's my kind of people."  I hadn't heard that in a while.

I used to hear, "He's good people," a lot.  I didn't hear that expression until I was in my 30s.  I grew up in a different part of the country than where I lived for 30 years of my adult life.  At first, it didn't make good sense to me.  I had heard, "He's my kind of person," and "He's from good stock,"  but never the two expressions so common to the region I lived in for 30 years.

I finally understood the expression, "He's good people."  I don't live in that region of the country any longer and haven't heard the expression since leaving - until today.  It turns out the stylist was from the region I had lived in so long.

Dialect features mark us all in in our view of life.  It doesn't matter if expressions of a dialect fit the grammar of the mainstream language or not.  The features are said, often, over several generations, and mark the people from the area.  I have my own set of dialect features.  They mark who I am.  I could work to remove them (and I have removed some of them because they don't exude the image I want to have), but in some way, I want them to show.  They're a type of billboard saying, "This is me."

Yes, but partly no

Independence Day: Resurgence was exactly what one would expect from a sequel.  It was done well enough, built carefully on the first movie, and phased out the characters from the first movie that would not be acting any longer for the second sequel.  But even if it was predictable, it was suspenseful in all the right parts.  It maintained and heightened the conflict between the alien force and the human race.  It elevated the stakes by making the aliens' ships and weapons better and bigger than before.  It was a good way to spend time with characters who acted nobly to save the world.

One part that people might have expected to reach a heightened and even better level than the first movie would be the speech to save the world.  The first movie featured the U.S. president quoting Dylan Thomas at the climax of his inspirational speech, "We will not go quietly into the night" [at time stamp 1:43 of the video clip].

People were stirred to action and nobility.  The president's speech in the sequel in light of this first speech was an enormous disappointment.  The character chosen to be president was gruff in appearance and in speech manner.  He gave a terse, monotonous, uninspirational speech to rally the troops.  Fortunately, the president from the first sequel decided at that point to make the ultimate sacrifice to take out the queen mother of the aliens.  If it had not been for that, the movie might have failed in reaching the goal of maintaining the Independence Day spirit.

When the sequel leaves the cinema, compare the two speeches.  Anemic will be one of the words that comes to mind when you hear the speech to rally the forces.  It should be one of the lessons every communications teacher uses to give a non-example of motivational speeches.

What I'm used to

I remember well reading the introductory matter to a dictionary for the first time.  I know, no one really does that.  But, I decided to since most people haven't.  I found a number of interesting facts, but what intrigued me the most was the make-up of the committee that decided what entries to put in and how to rank and cut the information gathered to make the book that people use so authoritatively.  Intrigue was the right word at first because I had never read about that before, but as time went on, my intrigue turned disbelief at the liberties they took to conform the book to their own standards, ignoring some of the usages of some of the people surveyed.

I still recall reading about the word access.  In the 1980s, people began to use the word as a verb, especially when it came to accessing their money in their accounts.  However, the dictionary committee didn't care that the nature of the word had begun to change.  They made the decision to reflect only its noun use, so that people could only have access to their accounts.  That was unbelievable and unwarranted since so many people had begun to use access a verb.  I felt betrayed by the committee.

So, today as I was reading in USA Today about the orbiter Juno that had successfully been inserted into Jupiter's orbit, I came across something like access in the last sentence of the article.  The article said, "The information stream will end 19 months later, when NASA purposefully plummets Juno into Jupiter, Green said."  In my head I thought, there's something wrong with the two words used in the alliteration of the verb phrase.  Purposefully, for one, seemed like the wrong word.  I think the author meant to say the orbiter would intentionally be driven into the planet at the end of its mission.  In that case, the word to use would have been purposely.  I used to work with a colleague who never was able to see the distinction of the two words, so she settled on purposefully as her word to use and hoped no one would ever notice.  The verb, for two, also seemed different in its use than how I was normally used to hearing plummet used.  Some verbs in English don't take objects, called intransitive.  A little trip to the dictionary showed that the verb was intransitive.  But the author ockalf this article used "NASA purposefully plummets Juno" using plummets as a transitive verb.  Juno is the object.  

Many times people get words mixed up because they don't use them enough to remember the differences.  Pummel and plummet look and sound a lot alike.  So, I am thinking the author merely confused the two words because of lack of use, forgetting that pummel is used transitively and plummet is not.  Sometimes, journalists use a thesaurus to get words and so they don't always know how words are used.  Sometimes, their brains merely confuse words.  And sometimes, people are writing out of their field of expertise and try to apply words they see in a completely acceptable context to an unfamiliar context and fail in their attempt at transfer.  Who knows what happened here?

But, of course, dictionaries don't always report what is acceptable, which is why I started the blog with the story of access.  Maybe, the verb plummet is changing.  Maybe I ride with the crowd that hasn't picked up on the change yet.  Maybe it's a dialect feature of the writer, past or current, with which I am not familiar.  Maybe it's the dictionary's fault for not reporting usage that the younger generation has begun to use.  Maybe it's the writer's background of not having or not remembering the grammar that's taught in schools.  Or maybe it's just a confused writer who didn't have enough time to revise before a deadline.

Whatever.  It seems like I am hearing and reading a lot of really different communication these days from what I am used to.

[The USA Today article in general is very informative and reported what happened in a professional manner.  You can find the link to the article by clicking here.]