Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Lawrence Krauss has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (note: this bit of the paper is largely right wing, not that Krauss is) that shows some ways the ever vigilant Google Squad is policing language. Click on the screenshot to read: According to Krauss, the policing will work this way: Google has created guidelines … Continue reading Google purifies its language
I don’t keep up with the politics of The Atlantic much: even though I have a subscription, I rarely get time to read it. But reader David sent me a link to the piece below, which turns out to be a trenchant critique of the verbiage of the woke, which is called “equity language”, why … Continue reading The Atlantic unpacks (and criticizes) woke language
It’s been a while since I posted about anything by Nick Cohen, whom I used to read (and admire) all the time. I guess he’s writing more often on his Substack site. Checking that out, I found this on his Wikipedia bio: Nicholas Cohen (born 1961) is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He was a … Continue reading Nick Cohen on the AP’s language recommendation
Let me begin by trying to note what’s good about this new article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, for Dan Dennett suggests, properly, that one should credit one’s opponents with the good and correct things they say before taking issue with the other stuff. First, the article below is motivated by good sentiments: the … Continue reading On the harm, violence, and danger of wrongspeak in ecology and evolution
All of these words are like the others, and you’ll see why. I invite you to add to the list: nuanced stakeholder weaponize standpoint intersectional harm violence (referring to language or words) problematize (or problematic) I thought of more, but thought I’d throw it into your laps. The words are, of course, red flags for … Continue reading Expand this list of related words
Now I’m not sure that the word “tribe” in my title is an Approved Progressive Left Term®, but I can’t think of a better one for the nonce. And if that word were erased by the woke, according to this new article by Matthew Yglesias on his Substack site, I wouldn’t have much reason to … Continue reading Matthew Yglesias: Woke language change isn’t meant to improve society, but to increase inequality
Just look at this headline in the Torygraph! Isn’t that guaranteed to get nearly everyone to look, woke or not? The short newpaper article may well be paywalled for you (see by clicking on the headline), but you can see it archived here on the Wayback Machine. What appears to have happened is that Richard … Continue reading Richard Dawkins sticks up for the “bad” old biology words
Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a very rare speech disorder—fewer than 100 cases have been seen in the last century—first described in 1907. In this edition of “60 Minutes Australia,” several such people are highlighted, centering on two Aussies who both developed an inescapable “Irish” accent, one after a migraine and the following a tonsillectomy. … Continue reading Foreign accent syndrome: a bizarre form of speech disorder
This morning I mentioned in Da Nooz that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Stanford University had undertaken an 18-month “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”, which gave a long list of words deemed harmful or offensive and suggesting replacements. Some of the words were ones I wouldn’t use, while many others are on the border … Continue reading Stanford’s IT language police back off, but only about one word
If you’ve studied German, you’ll know that the language has three classes of gendered nouns, feminine, masculine, and neuter, with the definite article (“the”) being “die”, “der”, and “das” respectively. There are two indefinite articles (“a”), with the male/neuter and female forms being “ein” and “eine” respectively. The articles don’t always correspond to the actia; … Continue reading Germans and Brits try to eliminate gendered nouns in the German language
