Comments on Hugh Sconyers
Regarding last week's mention of Hugh Sconyers and the 1982 rare coin market,Martin Kaplan writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:HUGH SCONYERS AND THE 1982 RARE COIN MARKET(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n33a19.html)

Corrections to the August 5, 2012 Issue

Last week I wrote: " Hugh Sconyers and his invertors...". Of course, this should have been INVESTORS. Thanks to Bill Eckberg for reporting this.

I mangled this sentence, too: " I conformed this with Chopmark News editor Colin Gullberg...", to which Bill responds:

Opps! Sorry - we'll fix these in our archive.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: AUGUST 5, 2012: Chopmark Collectors Club Dues(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n33a08.html)
HUGH SCONYERS AND THE 1982 RARE COIN MARKET(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n33a19.html)

I MENTION a certain writer in an e-mail, and the reply comes back: "Comcast McCarthy??? Phoner novelist???" Did I really type "Comcast"? No. The great god Autocorrect has struck again.

It is an impish god. I try retyping the name on a different device. This time the letters reshuffle themselves into "Format McCarthy." Welcome to the club, Format. Meet the Danish astronomer Touchpad Brahe and the Franco-American actress Natalie Portmanteau.

In the past, we were responsible for our own typographical errors. Now Autocorrect has taken charge. This is no small matter. It is a step in our evolution - the grafting of silicon into our formerly carbon-based species, in the name of collective intelligence. Or unintelligence as the case may be.

Earlier this year, the police in Hall County, Ga., locked down the West Hall schools for two hours after someone received a text message saying, "gunman be at west hall today." The texter had typed "gunna," but Autocorrect had a better idea.

One more thing to worry about: the better Autocorrect gets, the more we will come to rely on it. It's happening already. People who yesterday unlearned arithmetic will soon forget how to spell. One by one we are outsourcing our mental functions to the global prosthetic brain.

I can live with that. We do it with memory, we do it with navigation, so what the he'll, let's do it with spelling.

To read the complete article, see:Auto Crrect Ths!(www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/auto-correct-this.html?_r=1)