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?

Satirical video series sums up just about everything you need to know about government

Poor Alexis. All she wants is to live her life and follow her dream, but her overbearing boyfriend, Scott "Gov" Govinski, insists on saving her from herself. Yeah, it's a pretty thinly veiled metaphor, but it's pretty funny. And pretty spot-on. This five-part comedy series is brought to you by the Independent Institute:

Episode 1: An Education in Debt

Episode 2: Protection from Jobs

Episode 3: A Remedy for Healthcare Choices

Episode 4: House Poor

Episode 5: Keeping a Close Eye on Privacy

A brief glimpse at how the clock changed the world

When we mechanized time, we also, and completely by accident, mechanized us. And when the clocks got smaller, time could follow us everywhere, a constant reminder of hours, minutes, seconds lost or won. Now we don't eat when we're hungry, we eat when it's time to eat. We don't sleep when we're tired, we sleep when it's time to sleep. We've built an amazing world that runs like clockwork, meaning that these days, so do we.

(via Challies.com)

11-year-old wins 7th annual Doodle 4 Google competition

11-year-old Audrey Zhang of Long Island won the 2014 Doodle 4 Google competition with her drawing of a futuristic water purifier.

The folks at Google helped Audrey turn her doodle into a moving animation. She was rewarded with a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 grant for her school.

Read more here.

String theory explained to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody

Singing scientist Timothy Blais explains string theory, a capella-style, to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody." And it actually makes much more sense than the original song.

Education vs. Schooling

Free, 22 million-page searchable archive of historical newspapers

The Library of Congress, working with $22 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has created an online digital archive of five million newspaper pages. Tom Tryniski of Fulton, New York, has created a database of 22 million newspaper pages with only a few computers and a microfilm scanner.


You can peruse Tryniski's newspaper collection here.

(via The Tea Party Economist)

Free online speed reading program

If you're like me, the arduous process of slogging through a massive tome is becoming more and more intimidating. This is, after all, the Information Age, and we're used to having pretty much everything reduced down to a few lines in a blog post, a two-minute YouTube clip, or a 140-character-or-less tweet. Anything beyond that...well, there just isn't enough time between Facebook status updates.

Eyercize is a free, online speed reading program that's designed to help you become a more accomplished reader. It's designed to help you:

ease your workload

reduce eyestrain

improve your job skills

get better grades

improve your material retention

The program allows you to adjust your reading speed from 100wpm up to 5,000. There are other helpful features, including a bookmarklet you can copy to your browser toolbar which, when clicked, takes text you have highlighted on a web page and pulls it into the speed reading trainer.

And did I mention that it's free?

(via Gary North's Tip of the Week email)

How well do you know your states?

In this geographical game, a random state shape appears at the top of the screen, and all you have to do is click and drag it into place. Simple, but not as easy as you might think. I actually did pretty well after a couple of tries. Click here to play.

(via Kottke)

15-year-old develops new and improved cancer test...using Google

Jack Andraka of Maryland won $75,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in May for developing a screening test for pancreatic cancer that's faster, more sensitive, and cheaper than the current standard. What's even more amazing is that he's only 15 and did most of his research online.


Andraka is now continuing his research at Johns Hopkins University.

(via InfoWars.com)

Congratulations, Class of 2012!

(from my "cartoon" blog White Noise)

Do they offer a Ph.D. in "Undeclared"?

(from xkcd)

How to cite a tweet in an academic paper

It's pretty simple, really:

Visit The Atlantic for more detailed instructions.

High school was a lie

Perhaps all we really need to know was learned in kindergarten.

(from Doghouse Diaries)

Floating zombie-proof fortress

When it comes to survival, mobility is probably the most important factor -- especially during a zombie apocalypse. This floating fortress is the perfect safe-house. Just imagine yourself drifting along the Mighty Mississippi, safe from the zombie hordes and enjoying what's left of some of America's favorite skylines as your bedroom view. Win-win.

(via)

Keep Your Kids Out of Indiana's "Pubic" Schools

Stories like this one out of South Bend, Indiana, are always great blog fodder:

If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and State Road 23 between Thursday and Monday morning.

The ad urged people to go to the "southbendon.com" website for a look at the "15 best things about our pubic schools." That's right, the billboard said "pubic" instead of "public" schools. The letter "L" had been left out of the word public.

Now, I don't know what's more sad, the fact that an ad celebrating public education was misspelled, or that the reporter thought it necessary to explain to her readers exactly which letter in the word was missing. Either way, it doesn't reflect well on the people of Indiana.

Things That an Average Person Would Do During a Zombie Apocalypse

Whoever said this blog wasn't informative?

(via)

Why University Websites Aren't That Helpful

(via)

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"!

Canadian Know-How

Here's a helpful automotive tip from the best do-it-yourself show on TV, The Red Green Show: