A comment on my recent post (Rule Book Racism: Can a Black Athlete Celebrate?) deserves a full response. Lanny writes: “A young, black, athletic man will soon be our president.” Why don’t you call him white? He’s just as much white as black. Is my wife, Karina, yellow or white, Japanese or American? Her mother [...]
Category Archives: Language
Planetarium Earmark
October 9, 2008 – 9:38 pm
As former chairman of the Summer Science Program (SSP), an academic enrichment program for the very brightest teenagers, I know a bit about astronomy, the focus of SSP’s curriculum. I also know a bit about planetariums ["planetaria" is also accepted, but that sounds like a type of worm to me]. And since SSP once investigated, [...]
Draw Your Brakes–A Jamaican Creole Shout
September 20, 2008 – 1:13 am
Some art, like the 1969 Hopper/Fonda film, Easy Rider, flashes boldly in its moment and ages to insignificance or embarrassment. Some, like the soundtrack of the 1972 reggae film, The Harder They Come, is timeless. I owned the soundtrack early and played the cassette until it was lost. Almost 35 years later, I bought the [...]
Vetting the Candidates
September 6, 2008 – 12:27 am
“Has she been thoroughly vetted?” they ask. It’s an apt question. But do they know what the word actually means?
Protecting America from Immigrants
May 8, 2008 – 12:31 pm
She makes a terific argumint. – The sign in the background reads: ——–Tejas no es una colonia mexicana. A tip of the hat to Robert Rummel-Hudson’s Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords blog. -
Will There Be Water in Lake Chad?
March 29, 2008 – 8:06 pm
Much of the talk about unsettled times ahead looks to oil as a cause: economies will undergo transition and regional conflicts will increase. Think also about water. Lake Chad is an exemplar. At one time the world’s sixth largest lake, included in four African countries (Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria), it has, in less than [...]
A Singular Eating Experience
February 26, 2008 – 4:09 pm
Several years ago my brothers (Lanny and Doug) and I were on Long Island where Doug, a well-known performer of modern Jewish music, had a concert scheduled. The show was set for 7:30 p.m., with a sound check an hour earlier, but it was just 4:45 and Doug was hungry. Because a full stomach does [...]
Prof. Joshua Whatmough — Linguistics 120
February 11, 2008 – 11:30 am
This morning, rising with formless, benignant wonderings about my future and vague remembrances of my long-ago youth, I surprised myself with an abrupt focus on Prof. Joshua Whatmough (“WUTT-moe”). I googled and found a perfect description of his terrifying and exhilarating classroom (in 1947) put up on a webpage by one of Whatmough’s former students, [...]
