What it looks like when we've run out of things to offend us

When we've run out of things to offend us, we start digging and scrounging to find something—anything—even remotely controversial. Leave it to a publication like The New York Times to find controversy in kids dressing up as superheroes. In this particular case, white kids dressing up as Black Panther:

Black Panther costumes—whether the character's full raiment or just his claws and mask—are on toy store shelves (and, of course, on Amazon) in anticipation of the film's Feb. 16 release. At best, the character get-ups speak to the enthusiastic embrace of a black superhero. At worst, they could be perceived as an unwitting form of cultural appropriation, which has in recent years become a subject of freighted discourse.

Exactly how a white kid could be guilty of "cultural appropriation" by dressing up as a fictional comic book character created by two white guys is beyond me, but apparently this is a serious discussion parents are supposed to be having with their kids.

As if grammar wasn't hard enough, here come 'gender-neutral' pronouns

This past Wednesday, Donna Braquet, Director of the Pride Center at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, made some waves. She (assuming I'm using the correct pronoun here) encouraged staff and students to abandon all common sense when it comes to names, pronouns, gender identities, and official school rosters. She writes:

We should not assume someone's gender by their appearance, nor by what is listed on a roster or in student information systems. Transgender people and people who do not identity within the gender binary may use a different name than their legal name and pronouns of their gender identity, rather than the pronouns of the sex they were assigned at birth.

In the first weeks of classes, instead of calling roll, ask everyone to provide their name and pronouns. This ensures you are not singling out transgender or non-binary students. The name a student uses may not be the one on the official roster, and the roster name may not be the same gender as the one the student now uses.

Leaving aside the question of why, given such reasoning, a school would bother having a roster at all, what kinds of pronouns are we talking about here?:

We are familiar with the singular pronouns she, her, hers and he, him, his, but those are not the only singular pronouns. In fact, there are dozens of gender-neutral pronouns.

A few of the most common singular gender-neutral pronouns are they, them, their (used as singular), ze, hir, hirs, and xe, xem, xyr.

These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new. The she and he pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ze when growing up.

Folks, let me remind you that this is someone holding an influential position at a university.

Imagine if students' personal preferences were allowed free reign in other areas of college life. "Yeah, I know I've been getting Cs and Ds on all my assignments, but deep down I identify as an A student. Come on, professor. Why are you being so hateful and intolerant? Isn't this supposed to be a safe zone?"

Ms. Braquet (I'm using "Ms." because I haven't seen a list of gender-neutral personal titles) concludes:

How do you know what pronoun someone uses? If you cannot use the methods mentioned above, you can always politely ask. "Oh, nice to meet you, [insert name]. What pronouns should I use?" is a perfectly fine question to ask.

The more we make sharing of pronouns a universal practice, the more inclusive we will be as a campus. When our organizational culture shifts to where asking for chosen names and pronouns is the standard practice, it alleviates a heavy burden for persons already marginalized by their gender expression or identity.

She (ze?) then invites anyone wishing to learn more to sign up for a Safe Zone workshop. I'll bet they'll need the large conference room for that.

I don't know what kind of feedback UTK received when people read Donna Braquet's suggestions, but I imagine it was quite critical, especially since the school released the following statement just two days later:

We would like to offer clarification on statements referring to gender-neutral language.

There is no mandate or official policy to use gender-neutral pronouns. We do not dictate speech. Most people prefer to use the pronouns he and she. However, some don't.

The information provided in this week's Office of Diversity and Inclusion newsletter was offered as a resource to our campus community on inclusive practices.

We strive to be a diverse and inclusive campus and to ensure that everyone feels welcome, accepted, and respected.

My apologies to the "we're not happy unless we're offended" crowd, but let me make this clear: I will not use gender-neutral pronouns, no matter how mainstream the practice may become. The world is already complicated as it is. Why must we complicate it further?

Poor cocoa farmers taste chocolate for the first time

Most of us take a simple thing like chocolate for granted, but it's really a luxury—especially among those who actually grow and harvest the cocoa beans to make it. In this video, witness the joy of cocoa farmers as they taste the end result of their hard work for the very first time...


(via Sploid)

When the meaninglessness of a purely naturalistic worldview gets you down, just remember: you've got thumbs!

What playing cricket looks like to Americans

This hilarious sketch is from the Dutch comedy group Jiskefet.



(via Kottke)

How to use a paper towel properly

I don't know about you, but I hate walking into a public restroom and finding myself wading ankle-deep in paper towels with nothing left in the dispenser with which to dry my hands or open the door upon exiting. That's because 97% (to use a random figure) of Americans don't know how to use a paper towel properly.

The solution to this problem lies in remembering two simple words: shake, fold. I encourage you to watch this video and forward it along to others. Remember, only you can prevent unnecessary paper towel waste.

European workers who get sick while on vacation are entitled to another vacation

Europeans love their vacation time. In fact, when they aren't on vacation, they can usually be found rioting for more paid time off from work. Now, Europe's highest court has decided that workers who get sick while on vacation are legally entitled to take another vacation:

Image source: No-Vacation Nation, by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt (PDF)

"The purpose of entitlement to paid annual leave is to enable the worker to rest and enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure," the Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg, ruled in a case involving department store workers in Spain. "The purpose of entitlement to sick leave is different, since it enables a worker to recover from an illness that has caused him to be unfit for work."

With much of Europe mired in recession, governments struggling to reduce budget deficits and officials trying to combat high unemployment, the ruling is a reminder of just how hard it is to shake up long-established and legally protected labor practices that make it hard to put more people to work and revive sinking economies.

The workers originally won their case in a Spanish court, where they argued that collective bargaining agreements made a distinction between annual leave and sick leave that was recognized by Spanish law. The National Association of Large Distribution Businesses, known as Anged, appealed to the Supreme Court in Madrid, which then asked the Court of Justice for a ruling on how to apply European law covering working times.

The Court of Justice had previously ruled that a person who gets sick before going on vacation is entitled to reschedule the vacation, and on Thursday it said that right extended into the vacation itself.

"The point at which the temporary incapacity arose is irrelevant," the court found.

The ruling applies across the European Union of 27 countries.

No wonder so many European countries are in need of a financial bail-out.

(via Economic Policy Journal)

Do Swedish men pee sitting down?

Image: Toronto Sun

Some do, apparently. And they would like to force other men to do the same.

The Left Party in Sörmland is proposing that men be made to take a seat when using the toilets at the county council's offices. Their reasoning, so they say, has to do with hygiene and health.

Now, I will concede that even the manliest of men don't like standing in puddles of urine when relieving themselves, and forcing men to sit might cut down on some of the excess spillage. But most grown men tend to get a little irked when they are told how they are to perform one of life's most natural functions.

The real reason for this policy, of course, is to fall in line with Sweden's move toward a gender-neutral utopia. What better place to start than in the bathroom?

(If cleanliness really was the issue, the Swedes could implement something similar to what was done in the Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam.)

An observation regarding the side effects of prescription drugs

Should language-butchering be outlawed?

While I'm on vacation, please help yourself to some old slices of Lemon Harangue Pie.

Should language-butchering be outlawed?
(originally posted 10/06/2006)

It looks like some government officials in Malaysia must have read my "If I Were in Charge..." article and taken it seriously:

Malaysia to Levy Fines for Poor Speech

Malaysia will levy fines on those incorrectly using the national language, and will set up a specialized division to weed out offenders who mix Malay with English, news reports said Thursday.

Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Rais Yatim said fines of up to 1,000 ringgit ($271) can be imposed on displays with any wrong or mutated form of Malay, the Star newspaper reported.

The move was to ensure "the national language was not sidelined in any way," Rais said, according to The Star.

Poor speech, bad spelling, and horrible grammar have always been pet peeves of mine. But do we really want linguistic laziness to be against the law? Isn't that going a bit too far?

Hmmmmm...let's see.

I'm now imagining an America where people are fined for saying "reeluhtor" instead of "realtor," "supposably" instead of "supposedly," and for using non-existent words like "irregardless."

I'm also picturing how a law like this could affect (note how I used "affect" instead of "effect") cyberspace. Its (note the correct way to not use an apostrophe) effect (note how I used "effect" instead of "affect") could be positive. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind running across a blogger who actually knew to type "definitely" rather than "definately." It's (note the correct way to use an apostrophe) always good to avoid misspelling (note the correct spelling of "misspelling") words, and following Malaysia's lead might be the answer.

I can see a world in which poorly, constructed run-on sentences, riddled with, unnecessary puctuation!!! SCREAMING AT ME IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS are replaced with crisp, clean sentences that get right to the point and don't ramble on incessantly without actually saying anything, but just making it seem as if the author is trying to meet some sort of word quota so that it looks like he knows what he's talking about, but in reality is just a pompous, cynical jackass who thinks he's better than everybody else because he has discovered the world of blogging and has nothing better to do with his time than to just sit at his desk and type until he's pulled away from his computer screen by a rerun of Seinfeld that he's already seen 37 times.

Sorry. What was I saying?

Oh, yes: banning desecration of the English language. Now that just might be a totalitarian policy I can get behind!

America's Love Affair with Cars Is Over

P. J. O'rourke eloquently describes the end of the affair:

We've lost our love for cars and forgotten our debt to them and meanwhile the pointy-headed busybodies have been exacting their revenge. We escaped the poke of their noses once, when we lived downtown, but we won't be able to peel out so fast the next time. In the name of safety, emissions control and fuel economy, the simple mechanical elegance of the automobile has been rendered ponderous, cumbersome and incomprehensible. One might as well pry the back off an iPod as pop the hood on a contemporary motor vehicle. An aging shade-tree mechanic like myself stares aghast and sits back down in the shade. Or would if the car weren't squawking at me like a rehearsal for divorce. You left the key in. You left the door open. You left the lights on. You left your dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.

I don't believe the pointy-heads give a damn about climate change or gas mileage, much less about whether I survive a head-on with one of their tax-sucking mass-transit projects. All they want to is to make me hate my car. How proud and handsome would Bucephalas look, or Traveler or Rachel Alexandra, with seat and shoulder belts, air bags, 5-mph bumpers and a maze of pollution-control equipment under the tail?

And there's the end of the American automobile industry. When it comes to dull, practical, ugly things that bore and annoy me, Japanese things cost less and the cup holders are more conveniently located.

Read the full article here.

Monty Python Recycled Ancient Jokes

It turns out that the Dead Parrot sketch, one of the most well-known sketches from the British comedy troupe Monty Python, is at least 1,600 years old:

A classic scholar has proved the point, by unearthing a Greek version of the world-famous piece that is some 1,600 years old.

A comedy duo called Hierocles and Philagrius told the original version, only rather than a parrot they used a slave.

It concerns a man who complains to his friend that he was sold a slave who dies in his service.

His companion replies: "When he was with me, he never did any such thing!"

The joke was discovered in a collection of 265 jokes called Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which dates from the fourth century AD.

Hierocles had gone to meet his maker, and Philagrius had certainly ceased to be, long before John Cleese and Michael Palin reinvented the yarn in 1969.

"Philagrius"? More like "Pilagiarus"!

It's Not Over Until The Fat Lady Shrinks

Opera isn't what it used to be. Stage directors are starting to insist that opera singers actually do some acting, and that they should actually "look the part" for the role they're singing. This is apparently causing some weight discrimination issues for a few stars, though! This story appeared today on the CBS News website:

Deborah Voigt is back, in black.

The American soprano returns to the Royal Opera House stage Monday, four years after the company fired her for being too big for the little black dress chosen for the title character in Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos." The decision sparked a fierce debate about weight discrimination in opera.

Now a slimmer Voigt is back in the same opera, the same role - and wearing "that" dress.

Full story here...

Well, I guess this is inevitable, since opera is starting to attract a new crowd. I think it may have skipped a generation, because when I go to the opera, I see a lot of old folks, and a lot of young twenty-something folks, and often not much in between! And that's just among the fans. I'm a volunteer chorus singer for a small opera company here in the Des Moines, IA, area. Aside from a few volunteers, though, the company fills out most of the chorus with young paid (barely) apprentices. There is definitely no shortage of young talent now trying to get into opera. As one who has to share cramped backstage space with them, I must say I am grateful for thin sopranos.

We Need More Rules

Since turning schools into gun-free zones has ended school shootings and made kids safer, why not carry that same unassailable logic further and make kids healthier? Well, one school did just that.

Sheridan Middle School, in New Haven, Connecticut, has banned all candy sales as part of a district-wide wellness policy. Naturally, you can always count on one or two miscreants to rock the boat, and one eighth-grade honors student thought he could get away with buying a bag of Skittles from another student.

What insolence! It is that kind of brazen disregard for authority that puts society as a whole at risk.

Fortunately, law and order won out and the rebellious student received a one-day suspension, was barred from attending an honors student dinner, and was stripped of his title as class vice president. That should teach the little brat.

Look. It's simple. Just as the banning of guns on school grounds means no dead kids, it is only logical to conclude that the banning of candy sales means no fat kids. You just can't argue with that kind of reasoning.

But if you dare to question authority and flout the rules put in place for your own protection, even without realizing it, then you must be made to suffer the harshest of consequences. Anything less would be seen as a sign of weakness, and without a strong, centralized authority, civilization as we know it would collapse.



UPDATE: The same school district, back in 1993, approved a plan to distribute condoms to kids as early as the fifth grade. Thank goodness for public "education"!

The Fight Against Global Fattening

You just can't make this crap up:

Obesity needs to be tackled in the same way as climate change, a top nutritional scientist has said.

The chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce wants world leaders to agree a global pact to ensure that everyone is fed healthy food.

Professor Philip James said the challenge of obesity was so great that action was needed now, even without clear evidence of the best options.

He also called for stricter rules on marketing and food labelling.

These sniveling, sycophantic traffickers of tyranny won't rest until government agencies control every single aspect of our lives. Well, in my humble opinion, the nutrition Nazis who think they can tell us what we can and can't eat should be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Yeah, I'm hungry right now. What about it?!

What Happened to Good Ole Reliable Suicide?

Former student kills 6 at Northern Illinois University, sparks 'chaos'

I don't mean to be callous, but if you want to kill yourself so badly, can't you just kill yourself? What is with this trend of mass murdering classmates and others first? I truly don't recommend suicide as an answer to one's problems, but I would far rather someone take their own life than to SHOOT 21 people before doing so. Wasn't there just a school shooting LAST WEEK, too? Seriously, what is wrong with these people? I guess if we knew that we wouldn't be seeing these things in the news so often.

You're Good Enough, You're Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like You

A word of encouragement for the new year from Stuart Smalley, The Secret, and, of course, Joel Osteen...

Weird Al's Gonna Sue Ya!

It's the End of the World As We Know It

How much more tragedy can one nation handle? 9/11, Katrina, the California wildfires, and now the Hollywood writers' strike. In the words of Barry McGuire, we're on the eve of destruction.

Seriously, things are pretty bad. According to an MSNBC report, about 30 striking writers converged on a house used in the shooting of Desperate Housewives, chanting, "We write the story-a, Eva Longoria."

Wait...it took a team of 30 writers to come up with that? On second thought, maybe this strike is a good thing. I mean, aren't these the same people who gave us Baywatch Nights?

Elvis Has Left the Building

Elvis Presley died in 1977. Now, the museum dedicated to the theory that he didn't die is dead.

Bill Beeny, the 81-year-old owner of the Elvis Is Alive Museum, is finally calling it quits and is selling his Elvis memorabilia on eBay. From the AP:

Beeny, a self-described "western Kentucky hillbilly" Baptist minister who wound up in Missouri 50 years ago, is selling the contents of his roadside attraction, a transformed coin-operated laundry 55 miles west of St. Louis that he opened in 1990, to satisfy something else that drives him.

"I have a burden to help people," said Beeny, wearing the penciled dark mustache, long sideburns and slick black hair of an Elvis aficionado. "Someone else can run, will run, the museum. No one in the whole county is doing the job I intend to do."

Beeny wants to put his energy into serving the needy in rapidly growing Warren County by providing child care, senior services, a food pantry and counseling for the addicted.

Beeney said he'll miss Elvis, "but life has its changes. You have to let go."

Better 30 years late than never.

I think he made the right decision. After all, he's been in direct competition with the official Elvis Is Dead Museum (a.k.a. Graceland) for the last 17 years. That couldn't have been good for business.

No matter. At least he's found something constructive to do. The King would be pleased.