Maggie's Farm

You might have heard of that social anarchist who runs Coyote Blog.  I wrote a scathing exposé on this scurrilous scofflaw here.

As for coyotes, he seems to think they're a cute, cuddly bunch, but a Google search proves otherwise:

Well, this menace to society is back in the news, again preaching his particular brand of anarchy, this time against the very foundation of our language, and thus society, itself:

By the way, if anyone read the fabulous book "Barbarians and the Gate," they** will remember RJR Nabisco's construction of a...

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** I know this is grammatically incorrect, but I am exhausted with English's lack of a third person singular gender-neutral pronoun and hate saying "he or she."  English is a language built bottom up from actual usage, so lacking any better idea, I support "they" as the solution.

I've been using "they" in this regard for over 20 years.

In fact, you could even say that the subject is a part of blog history.  As I note in my bio, I was 'blogging' on a daily basis on my BBS a decade before the word was coined.  In one of the first pages I wrote for the board, the 'Welcome' page, I told everyone that they'd see two variations from standard English in my articles; using 'they' for 'he or she' and putting punctuation outside of quote marks.  (I'll cover the latter some other time.)  So it could be said that one of the first blogs in history mentioned this very subject.  Twenty-two years ago.

Here's the famed James Taranto quoting other people in his daily column.  James is a stickler for following the rules.

"But there's something disappointing in giving your sparring partner exactly what they [sic] want."

"Of course what Ferraro said is that "nobody is going to say they [sic] don't ..."

"Where a person lives, their [sic] immigration status or who they [sic] love should not ..."

"... if a black person killed a white person they [sic] were more likely ..."

"If a 5-year-old can't sit still, it is unlikely that they [sic] can do well in a kindergarten class ..."

What this is really saying is, Broken is okay.  I'm sure James and associated sticklers would like to fix every other broken thing on the planet, but for some reason they happily exclude this one obvious blow-it from their agenda.  The question for James is, Are you planning on doing this for the rest of time eternal?

Here's the bottom line:

They does not necessarily equal plural.  And I can semi-prove it.

My very first week in the South, I was alone in a diner.  The waitress walked up and asked, "How y'all doin' today?"  The exact same thing happened at a different diner a few days later.

That's when I realized that y'all doesn't necessarily equal 'plural', and 'they', in this context, is no different.  To refine it even further, you could say that 'he or she' is the they, because more than one person is involved.

Coyote got it exactly right.  Unlike any other language on the planet, English was built; constructed; formed from a collage of many languages, even varying forms of English, itself, and is thus designed to change with the times as the building process continues.  While a total bitch for the outsider to learn, we who are fluent in it are offered an immense, descriptive vocabulary that no other language comes close to.  In many, if not most languages, the exact meaning of a spoken word is based upon inflection.  In English, we have a whole different word for every single variation, and then we still have inflection for the nuance.

Put another way, using 'they' for a singular person might feel a little awkward, but [sic]'ing every use of it for the rest of time eternal sounds a lot more awkward.

As you've no doubt heard, the threat of Natural Global Colding is already showing signs of occurring, like it snowing in May in the midwest — in the middle of a drought, no less — and now the Oklahoma tornadoes being extra-violent because of the extra-cold wind sheer.  The following Newsweek article was written before the current rage of twisters, so the author was, indeed, prescient in what he says about them and how, unlike global warming, global colding actually will cause tornadoes and hurricanes to increase in both number and intensity, as his numbers verify.

Pic: This week's issue of Time also covers the subject in depth

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns may have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth.  The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now.

The evidence is support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.

Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.

...

Trend: To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather.  The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down.  Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions.  But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.  If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.

Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7 degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.  The scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies.  The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

So that's about as sobering as it gets, folks.  Ten years really isn't a very long time.

I originally spotted this alarming article on a very cool AGW site called Real Science.

The original article is here.

Newsweek.

April 28.

1975.

Dear Maggie's Valued Female Reader™:

I have tremendously good news.

It must be awful constantly being treated as a second-class citizen in a male-dominated society.  We all know about the inequalities in the job market, corporate structure and politics, but it's exceptionally cruel when even something as simple as sports needs an official Act of Congress (Title IX) just so a college can have a girls softball team.

But perhaps the biggest reminder of your lowly status is that even your clothes are regulated.  Wear this, don't wear that.  Do you see men going through any such restrictions?  Of course not.  Your being told what to wear based on your gender is the moral equivalent of being told which bathroom you can use based on the color of your skin.

And the great progressive city of New York has decided to address this hideous injustice, once and for all.

No longer will you be castigated and restricted and confined merely because of your gender.  No longer will you be forced to wear the shackles that the male-dominated society has placed upon you.

Because of the grand farsightedness of the great city of New York, you no longer have to wear the shackles at all.

Topless Women in Public Not Breaking the Law, Says NYPD

See, guys?

Progressivism isn't always bad.