semantics

I've been amused for some time that the word "black", when applied to people, has become a default proper noun, and is therefore initially capitalised. Here are a couple of examples from today's news: The Hill: Allen Russel, a 38-year-old Black man, will still serve a life sentence CBC...

Also "Sceptic". It's been well and truly hijacked and is now worthless. "I'm skeptical of climate change" means the person is a denier. "I'm skeptical of vaccines" is double-speak for "I'm ant-vax." "I'm skeptical of Covid....." means the person is a conspiracist loon. The term is done and...

Even as a little kid it was obvious to me Indians didn't have red skin. Asians never looked "yellow" and only extreme outliers were "black" or "white." It seemed to me most people were either beige or dark brown. In reading books on China I've read that Englishmen were considered to have "red"...

Coon cheese's name to be changed over racism concerns Do you agree?

Well, some of them are, obviously. But that's a choice. Pedophilia is a condition. And it's a pretty horrible condition. We say that abstinence-only sex education is a mistake, because people just don't work that way. We say that requiring priests to be celibate causes more problems than it...

An Indianapolis police officer was livid earlier this month when he discovered a bite had been taken out of his chicken sandwich. The officer ordered his food prior to the beginning of his shift and placed the bag in a refrigerator when he arrived at the county prison. Several hours later, he...

From here. This type of change had not even occurred to me. Congressman and Postman feel male but somehow freshman doesn't, like mankind doesn't - probably because I have been in those groups. Freshwoman sounds catchy! Are there more terms that we don't think twice about that will be...

I'm teaching a high school-level statistics course. There is no class set of textbooks but I have a teachers edition I'm loosely using as a curriculum guide. I was browsing through "measures of dispersal" and found this sentence: I asked students if they could spot a logical flaw in the...

"...Because Mexican is not a race" has been told more than once in this forum and others. I think this is not well reasoned. Firstly "racist" under its modern meaning is actually "xenophobia" which can indeed be the sole xenophobia against Mexican. But nobody or nearly use that word among lay...

May I make a plea for written English and discourage this illiterate "is [not] a thing" crap? We have words rather more precise and appropriate for a reason. For instance, our local self-described coward couls have said, "Unwritten rules are an oxymoron," or, "Unwritten rules have no practical...

This thread has been split from a thread discussing particular RCC priests. The discussion language and labels was off topic so I have split it here. Please remember your Membership Agreements, and in particular please remember that rule 1, rule 2 and rule 9 apply; ensure your posts do not...

Speaks for itself really. Sociology in particular seems pretty devoid of hard evidence based conclusions - lots of hypotheses of course. To a lesser extenT psychology too. As for economics!.. Perhaps they should be called something else, though I can't for the life of me think what..

Are the terms "atheism" and "theism" logically consistent or useful? I can understand the term "naturalism" as an assertion of laws of cause and effect that are consistent. Specifically this excludes supernatural influences. As far as I can tell, anything that would be described as a god would...

With limited approval by the PTB (see Questions thread in Forum Management), if it is limited to this thread and does not go meandering around the other threads and sub-forums like Shia LeBeouf at Cabaret (or in any interview he’s given on the topic), here is where we can discuss (hopefully...

I propose we use the NYIO instead of UFO. "Not Yet Identified Objects" is more accurate, I believe. We could also use IBIASFO?

Okay obviously this is somewhat a response to the plethora of beyond even solipsist level navel gazing posts that have hit the board recently, but it did lead me to a serious train of thought because the "I can't describe it linguistically, ergo it doesn't exist" argument is used a lot as a...

When I read about various causes of death in the overall human crowd, something seems wrong to me. Is it fair to say that so and so, 90 years old, died of heart disease? Or lung cancer? When so many other death-inducing factors were nipping at her heels? The implication is, that if we could...

...because it is so very broad. Both Noam Chomsky and John Kerry are labelled "liberals" in the US, and the difference in opinion between them is wider than the political spectrum in I think any western European country. Noam Chomsky wants wage labor abolished, as well as the state itself. I'm...

I am writing a blog entry that has something to do with linguistics, and would like a reality check from anyone who knows more about the subject than I do. It seems logical that there should exist languages associated with primitive cultures that have no means of expressing lofty ideas such as...

I was reading an article the other day about Bill Gates nostalgia in the face of his impending retirement. One of the things it touched on was part of his deposition to the prosecuting attorney in the antitrust case against Microsoft. This testimony infuriated the prosecutor and had the judge...

Wow. Incredible. I myself had not yet chosen a word to describe my choice to have no religious/spiritual beliefs. I had thought "why do I need a word?" but hadn't really given it much more thought. Sam Harris gave it some thought. Some serious thought. Anyone agree/disagree/thinking...

I was thinking about the definition of religion the other day and decided I liked this definition "a social organization, organized around central philosophical principles" This seems to get to the core of all religions, but also seems to include science as a religion(admittedly not in the...