The Iron Yuppie

My brother, smart, funny and generally very nice guy, was commenting on my blog the other day. He said two things, both of which struck me:

1) He was very disappointed in December. Fair enough, I published something only on one day. It's interesting to me just in that he actually thought he liked it enough that he would WANT something to be published.

2) He caught a spelling error. You know, all the spell checking and re-reading in the world won't catch all my mistakes. It's always going to be someone else who catches them. But, on top of that, I could have the most salient and insightful point in the WORLD, and if i have a horrible mispelling, you're going to think less of my thoughts. It's like that old psych study I read about... people with accents are thought to be less intelligent than people who can speak clearly. And this goes across all languages! Meaning that, even if you speak French but you speak it with an English accent, you'll be thought of as less intelligent. I suppose this goes to reinforce the concept that it's not just the message that matters, but the messenger (or the medium).