Purple Penguin Eaters

A week or so back Fox News reported on a case of political correctness gone wild - a school in Nebraska has banned teachers from referring to students as "boys and girls"; teachers are ordered to use "Purple Penguins" instead. 
Shockingly, Fox blew the story just a touch out of proportion. Long story short, some teachers got a handout of suggestions on how they might be more gender inclusive, and none of those suggestions involved calling all children purple penguins.
But the story got me to thinking about the methods the handout suggested, and whether they're pointless political correctness or little things that could make a big difference.
For example, instead of having kids line up in a boys' line and a girls' line, the handout suggested using some other arbitrary factor. Seems trivial, but consider this:
Teachers are statistically more likely to reprimand boys than girls for similar behavior. That means one line is likely to get more attention in the form of more reprimands. Boys who are behaving are being scolded by association. And while a little extra yelling might not seem like a big deal, but research shows that boys who feel teachers are biased against them perform more poorly and are less invested in their schoolwork. 
And while the teacher is busy yelling at John, she's ignoring Mary, who may be committing the same infraction as John - depriving Mary of a lesson in accountability.
If teachers aren't splitting kids up by gender, it could go a long way toward rectifying their biases, which are most often unconscious. Kids internalize these biases and act on them - boys are expected to act up, so they do. Science and math teachers don't push their female students as hard as they do their male students, so girls under-perform in those subjects. 
Girls are perceived as more obedient, and rewarded for passivity; teachers often move disruptive boys to sit near well-behaved girls, on the idea girls are a civilizing influence (which happens to reinforce a notion that girls are responsible for their own behavior as well as boys who aren't capable of being responsible for their own). But really, aren't these things inevitable? If teachers have been lining kids up by gender this long, is it really so bad for them to keep doing so?

Well, here are some facts that suggest maybe the status quo isn't good enough, and anything we can do, especially if it's as simple and unobtrusive as changing the way kids line up, is worth trying.

• Boys have lower grades and perform more poorly in school.
• Boys do poorly on standardized tests. 
• Boys are less likely than girls to go on to college. 
• Boys are more likely to be held back in school than girls with similar grades. Boys are more likely to be in remedial classes.
• Girls still under-perform in math and science.
• Boys get called on more, so girls aren't being challenged to speak up in public.

In short, girls aren't being challenged and boys aren't being judged fairly. Can making a few changes make teachers more gender-blind actually make a difference? I don't see how it

can hurt.

Also, random fact, if you Google "boys are," the first result is "stupid."

Fun with fallacies: begging the question

I think most people, myself included, use "beg the question" to mean "prompt us to ask the question." 
But in reality, "beg the question" is actually a type of logical fallacy, which is "assuming as true the very point that is under discussion," according to Theodore Bernstein. 
A perfect example of this fallacy is an article from TheWeek.com entitled "Why do so many liberals despise Christianity?" The author, Damon Linker, argues that liberals hate Christianity (like lack of centralized oversight and accountability), but begins with a statement that already assumes that liberals hate Christianity. By "begging the question," the author is able to attribute the beliefs of some liberals to hate for Christianity without having to show evidence that hatred of Christianity motivates these beliefs. 
So when a Slate.com editorial expresses "ambivalence toward missionary medicine," we can ignore writer Brian Palmer's arguments supporting his ambivalence because we know he's really saying what he's saying because he hates Christianity because he is liberal and liberals hate Christianity. Oddly, the article concludes that missionary medicine is a good thing and saves lives, and secular Americans should set aside their reservations and "let God do His work." But obviously, he's being insincere because he hates Christians because he's a liberal and liberals hate religion.

The article talks about a college in Boston that is facing having its accreditation revoked because the college has enforced a policy against being gay. The higher education commission that opposes the policy is made up of liberals (or so Linker implies), and they are threatening to revoke accreditation because they are liberals and liberals hate Christianity. So any arguments about equal rights are just a smoke screen because we know their real motive is hate for Christianity. And the commission couldn't be choosing to focus on the parts of the bible that talk about loving and not judging because liberals would never follow the bible because it is Christian and liberals hate Christianity. 

The fallacy of begging the question here allows the author to attribute liberal beliefs to hatred of Christianity, any argument to the contrary having no merit because we already know that liberals hate Christianity, therefore, when a liberal's beliefs conflict with those of a particular Christian, those beliefs are obviously the result of hatred of Christianity - no other argument is valid.

I bet you think this song is about you

There are many great mysteries from history. What happened to the Roanoke colony? Who was D. B. Cooper? What the hell is up with the Easter Island sculptures? But perhaps the greatest mystery is the one given to us by Carly Simon: who's so vain?

Ms. Simon has given many clues, but no solid answer as to the subject's identity, but Warren Beatty once said, "Let's be honest. That song was about me." Because irony. 

Here's a few other songs written about folks you may know.

Layla (Eric Clapton Jim Gordon, 1970)

The Layla to whom this song refers to the ancient Arabian tale of Layla and Majnun. Majnun, according to the story, was in love with Layla, but her father would not allow her to marry him, and so Majnun went insane. The Layla of the song stood for Clapton's secret love, Pattie Boyd. You might not have heard of Boyd, but you've probably heard of her then husband, Clapton's best friend George Harrison. That's pretty awkward, and it got even more awkward in 1979 when Harrison was an honored guest at Boyd and Clapton's wedding. Before the two divorced a few years later, Clapton also wrote the song Wonderful Tonight about Boyd.

How Do You Sleep vs. Silly Love Songs (John Lennon vs. Paul McCartney)
The Beatles were musical pioneers who created, among other things, the first concept album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), the first real music videos (they released them for Rain and Paperback Writer in 1965 instead of touring), and the first album in which all the songs were written by band members (most artists at the time performed music written by other people on their albums, and those who did have original work only had a few original songs on each album). 
After the excruciating public meltdown of The Beatles, Paul and John decided they hadn't had enough fighting and so they joined to innovate one more thing: the hip hop feud, in which they lobbed "diss tracks" at each other for the first several years of their solo careers.
John Lennon's 1971 How Do You Sleep was the most direct of these songs, with lyrics like "those freaks was right when they said you was dead" (I assume that McCartney must also have been the grammarian of the duo) and "the sound you make is muzak to my ears." 
That wasn't the catchiest song ever written, but one of McCartney's songs, 1976's Silly Love Songs (which is certainly muzak to my ears) was a response to John's complaint that all Paul wanted to write were "silly love songs."
And since I don't like either song, you get this:

Hollaback Girl (Gwen Stefani, Pharell Williams, and Chat Hugo, 2004)

This is absolutely the best song to perform on network television

This song, second only to Mickey and It's a Small World in its earworminess, is actually written about a person second only to Yoko Ono in its "talentless person only famous because of dead spouse"-iness, Courtney Love. Love, described by one of my friends as "literally the worst singer I have ever heard live" (see proof below), once said of Gwen Stefani "being famous is just like being in high school... I'm not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She's the cheerleader, and I'm out in the smoker shed." So Stefani wrote a song about being a cheerleader because... that'll show Courtney love she's not a cheerleader.

Actually, Love is kind of like the girl who drops out of high school

to form a terrible band and ends up dying in a prison knife fight.

Same planet, different worlds

So Jeremy and I are at the National Museum in London, checking out the Rosetta Stone and the body of freaking Cleopatra (like you do), and I visit the restroom. A museum employee apologized for the fact that  the blow-dryers were broken and I replied I'd just wipe my hands dry on my pants.
Up until that point, I'd been doing all right with the lingo (thank you, BBC America), but that all ended when I told the kindly old museum docent that I like to dry my hands on my underwear. 
Seems it's not just soccer and football that Americans and Englishmen can't agree on (I am with the English on that one, by the way - the game that consists solely of kicking a ball with your foot should be called football). Another pair of expressions with opposite meanings are public and private schools. Here, private schools cost money and public schools are free. There, it's the opposite. 
The things we call cookies, they call biscuits. Jeremy went into a KFC to try to figure out what the buttermilk biscuits were called there. They don't have them (in related news, KFC sells other food besides biscuits). Chips here are called crisps there, and chips there are called fries here. And "curry sauce" is a thing you dip your fries in, but appears to be gravy with curry powder added to it (and disgusting). There, if you mention a car's hooter, you're not claiming that a vehicle has a breast, but that it has a horn.
Cars in England have bonnets and boots, rather than hoods and trunks. Station wagons here are called estates there. 
Also, Dennis the Menace exists on both sides of the pond, but the two comic strips, both of which first appeared in 1951, are completely unrelated.

The best thing about British museums is that they're full of stuff that they obtained before
it was considered uncool to just go to somebody's island and take their treasures.

A cop shot a guy... who was shooting at him

Another black man was killed by a white cop in St. Louis, an Associated Press article tells me. The cop claimed that the Vonderitt D. Meyers whipped out a gun and started shooting, but the boy's mom said the boy had a sandwich, not a gun.
Oh yeah, and by the way, ballistics show Meyers totally had a gun and appear to confirm that he fired three times at officer with a stolen gun that was found at the scene. A fact that the article only points out 700 words into a 900 word story. 
The article points out that the man was black, that his parents (who near as I can tell weren't anywhere nearby) say he was unarmed, that a state senator called this "racial profiling gone bad." It mentions the Michael Brown killing in nearby Ferguson. It goes on to talk about protests, candlelight vigils, police arresting black protesters... all before pointing out that there's overwhelming evidence that things went down exactly as the officer in the Meyers case said.
Other stories follow the AP's lead. One CBS news story ran under the headline "Mom of man killed by St. Louis cop: he was unarmed." If you've got credible evidence that the St. Louis police force is both willing and capable of such a cover-up, let's hear it. If eyewitnesses saw Meyers using a sandwich to shoot at the cop, then mom's sandwich story is headline-worthy.
Journalists are well aware that most people don't read the whole story - many only read the headline. The AP and CBS know exactly what readers will assume. The media is lying by burying the truth and in so doing, handing ammunition to the white people of the world who would have us believe that racial profiling is A-OK and every cop who mistreats a minority is the victim of a liberal media smear campaign. 
All the evidence we have so far points to a conclusion that the officer who shot Vonderitt D. Meyers had ample reason. This is nothing like Michael Brown.
Brown was unarmed. He was 35 feet away from the cop who shot him, and at least 7 eyewitnesses say that Brown had his hands up when the cop shot at him. The forensic evidence does not confirm or deny either the officer's or the eyewitnesses' accounts. The cop's actions endangered the many folks standing around. The cop at the very least exercised poor judgement, and it's not unreasonable to suspect that if Brown were white, he would still be alive.
Burying the evidence of Meyers' guilt does not make him look less guilty, it makes the media look less credible. There are way too many folks who rush to defend every white cop who shoots a black man, overwhelming evidence notwithstanding - folks who believe they aren't racist, who want to bury all our heads in the sand and pretend racism is a hazy memory. Let's not be like them, rushing to judge all cops who shoot black men without looking at the evidence. 
I think it's time to focus on healing. I think it's time to focus on better non-violent crisis training for cops. On getting cops the equipment that lets them use deadly force only as a last resort. It's time to focus on solutions that keep cops, citizens, and yes, criminals, safe. It's time for coming together. We don't need liberal and conservative media reporting conflicting facts on the same story - we need openness, honesty, and dialog. 

You don't say

Traveling around the country for a job some years back, I discovered regionalisms I had no idea existed. Everybody knows about y'all and soda, but there's a whole world of regional weirdisms that your students will make fun of you for not knowing.
Like how people in parts of Pennsylvania refer to a shopping cart as a buggy. Which is especially weird in light of the fact Pennsylvania is Amish central, making it the one place in the union where you're most likely to see a horse buggy and a shopping buggy in the same trip. 
This regionalism quiz is eerily accurate. The quiz tells me I'm from Cleveland, Akron, or Canton - the three cities in which I've lived. It told Jeremy he's from Canton, Akron, or Fort Wayne - two of those are cities he's lived in, and the third is where his dad's family is from. Try it yourself. Tell me about it in the comments. Seriously, guys, when nobody comments, it makes me look even lamer than your average lady with a language blog.

Seriously? How do you people not have a word for this?

Only offensive if you think about it

Let me say in advance that this bit was a bad idea poorly executed by The Daily Show. Watching the Daily Show's coverage of the Washington Redskins controversy is a little painful, and not just because I'm a Cleveland Indians fan.

This coverage actually went way worse than the video lets on. One of the Redskins fans ran out and called the cops because she felt "threatened" (though there's nothing to indicate the Native Americans did anything that a reasonable person might find threatening). 
Some of the Native American folks who participated in the segment felt threatened, though. Their fear was maybe a bit more reasonable, considering the direct death threats they've gotten.
Even though the bit was a dirty trick, it raises a really important question. Would you wear your Chief Wahoo shirt to a meeting with some Native Americans? Would I admit to being an Indian's fan if a Native American person asked? 
And why on earth are fans of these racist mascots and team names so vitriolic when someone calls them out? How does a debate devolve into death threats so quickly? Because when you're arguing that your team name and mascot are intended to honor the Native American spirit, but then threaten to murder one of the people you're honoring, your words ring just a bit untrue.

I'm pretty offended by this mascot too.

Seriously, Cleveland? A FREE stamp with

legs would be a better mascot.

My title is in reference to this Onion story.

I'm not racist, I'm just stupid

So the Boston Herald ran this really lame cartoon recently. 

I mean, seriously, if you're going to be offensive, you could at least be funny about it.

Here's why some consider this offensive. For more than a century, the offensive image of a stereotypical black person or child with a big hunk of watermelon was ubiquitous. It was a degrading reminder for African Americans of their sub-human status in white society. 
Following Obama's election, the watermelon cartoon enjoyed a renaissance in less mainstream publications, only with our president as the starring player. You can see several hundred if you care to do a Google image search for "Obama and watermelon" (but I wouldn't advise it if you want to retain any faith in humanity). 
So the cartoonist at the Boston Herald claims he didn't mean anything about it, and the editorial staff plead naivete. And maybe it's my own naivete, but I actually believe them. 
But it makes me wonder... when it comes to journalism, does ignorance absolve idiocy? I mean, journalists are supposed to help people be less ignorant; yet nobody employed at the Boston Herald was familiar enough with the whole watermelon thing to have it ring alarm bells and change the toothpaste flavor (or replace the cartoon with one that was actually remotely funny)?
It reminds me of a decidedly more grave case where journalists claimed ignorance, this one in my hometown. Last year, a trans woman named Cemia Dove was found murdered. Newspaper coverage was shameful. The Plain Dealer ran the story of her death under a headline about an "Oddly Dressed Man" found murdered. The story reported that she was wearing three bras, no pants, and a Betty Boop tank top before it even mentioned her legal name. Her chosen identity, which they could easily have learned, wasn't even mentioned. The pronoun he was used throughout the story.
Once they learned Cemia's identity (and had already been contacted by folks from the trans community about the language in the first story), another story was run, again under a headline calling her a man, this one detailing her history of run ins with the local transit authority to whom, we learn, she had "lied" about her gender and identity. Later, the headline was changed to use the gender neutral "Clevelander," but the content of the story was unchanged.
All right, well, most people outside the community don't know the proper language to use (although people outside the community probably should know that stories about someone's grizzly death probably shouldn't start with fashion commentary, and that a five-minute public records search doesn't qualify as journalism). That's why the Associated Press style guide has clear standards to use when covering stories about trans folk.
The author of the story was publicly indignant that they'd been criticized, claiming that it was perfectly reasonable to not know about these standards. How did no one say "I have not encountered a news story about a transgender person; perhaps I should bother to do a damn Google search on the proper vocabulary to use"?
The folks at the Plain Dealer and the folks at the Boston Herald are essentially seeking absolution by saying "I shouldn't be blamed here; it's not my fault I don't know how to do my job."
Dude, you screw up, you own up. If the Herald had said "gee, that was a really big mistake we made and we're sorry," that'd be enough for me. But instead we get "I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to be sorry." If the Plain Dealer had apologized and atoned by speaking with the members of the trans community who reached out to them, maybe learned a bit about the alarming numbers of trans people who are violently attacked or outright murdered, it would have turned the situation around. Instead they ran an editorial by another reporter defending the first reporter's ignorance.
And they wonder why my generation gets its news from The Daily Show.

The Motherlands: Chester

Last year Jeremy and I had the incredible fortune to visit England and Ireland. When I finished college, the farthest I'd ever been away from home was Northern Virginia, and though I'd dreamed of going there all my life, I don't think I really believed it possible until we touched down in Dublin. It seems impossible to describe the feeling of visiting a place that had previously only existed in books, but my face hurts from smiling just thinking about it, so maybe that's all the description needed.
I should point out that it turns out I am a terribly nervous traveler and was abjectly terrified and homesick the entire time we were there, but as it turns out it is completely possible to be enchanted beyond imagining while simultaneously feeling physically ill with the desire to be home.
I guess I'll start by talking about Jeremy's and my favorite city, Chester, a lovely and ancient city on the border with Wales. The historical sites in the city are incredible, particularly to a couple of kids whose apartment is probably younger than any of Chester's McDonald's restaurants. 
The historical highlights of the town include a partially unearthed Roman amphitheater (the non-unearthed portion is under a slightly younger ancient historical structure, because that's just how England rolls), Roman baths, and one of the most complete Roman city walls in England.

Ah, the Internet. Where you don't have to have a slide projector to bore your
loved ones with your vacation photos

It's super cool that Chester has all this Roman stuff, because Chester's name comes from the Latin word castra, which means settlement. That wouldn't be terribly exciting, given how much of our language does come from Latin. However, castra is one of the very few words to find its way into English directly from Latin.
See, the Romans conquered England a couple thousand years ago and apparently didn't hang out with the natives too much. The Romans and the natives were pretty intent on murdering each other, which kind of puts a damper on cultural exchange. So even though the Romans stuck around several hundred years, they left, and left nothing behind but a few words, some cities, and a whole lot of corpses. Castra was one of the handful of words that stuck, and it survives in the name of every city with chester, cheshire, caster, or shire in its name.

Prescriptive linguistics is a HARD limit*

I've mentioned prescriptive linguistics here a few times, but I don't know that I've ever defined it. Linguistic prescriptivism is the philosophy that there should be immutable rules governing the language we speak, that there is a right way and a wrong way to use language, and that failure to follow these rules is a character flaw. I think people assume that all English majors are prescriptivists, and most of us probably start out this way. But a close study of the language makes it difficult, maybe impossible, to hold on to that philosophy. 

See, without a certain amount of elasticity, language doesn't exist. Without neologisms, we'd be stuck trying to communicate in a language that never progressed past rock and fire. And in fact, elasticity is one of the defining characteristics of the English language.

You see England got conquered. A lot. And each time it was conquered, the language stretched as words from another new language got crammed in. That's one of the reasons English has so many words that mean exactly the same thing. The Germanic tribes gave us the word cow, the Norse gave us bull, the French gave us beef, and now folks learning the English language are paying the price.

And part of the reason our grammar is so complicated and confusing. For instance, the word whom. In Latin, the direct object in a sentence ended in the letter m. For whatever reason, the French followed that rule for some, but not all direct objects. In English there are only a tiny handful of words that follow that rule (whom and him are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head), and there's no reason for them to. Latin had to use a special ending to indicate a direct object because they didn't have prepositions. We've got prepositions like to and for to indicate that a given noun is the object of the verb, so the m is just there for show. Linguistic prescriptivists cleave to this totally pointless rule, but those who don't follow it are doing English a favor, really, by stripping off the dead weight. 

English never stopped evolving, and the English language is so much richer for it. So when you think about it, it's the people who change the rules who are honoring the true essence of the language.


* Oddly enough, this is a quotation from 50 Shades of Grey. In between the pyrotechnic orgasms, the lavish displays of wealth (money porn), and endless filler, Ana and Christian have running debates over vocabulary and grammar.