Category: the world

  • Separation of race and state: a response to Coleman Hughes and Jamelle Bouie

    The most delicious thing in the world is a good discussion of a critical issue. That’s what we got in Open to Debate’s conversation between Coleman Hughes and Jamelle Bouie on the topic of color-blindness with regard to race. It was a great debate. I think Jamelle was most effective in pointing out that civil…

  • ‘they’ is not a drop-in replacement for ‘he’ and ‘she’, but we could use one

    Singular usage of ‘they’ is well-established in English, going back centuries. Depending on your exposure to it, you may yourself use it regularly, as I happily do. It’s great having a single word that can refer to individuals whose gender is unclear or unspecified. However, gender-neutral ‘they’ and its friends ‘them’, ‘their’, and ‘theirs’, do…

  • In Memoriam J. P. H.

    This one’s a bit macabre—caveat lector! March first has known some tragedies. On this day in history, in 1910, the deadliest avalanche in U.S. history swept over the rail depot in Wellington, Washington, killing 96. (So heavy was the slab of ice and snow, that the last of the bodies weren’t retrieved until July of…