Ned Danison, unedited

Here’s a little slice of ordinary folks in America discussing racism and so-called hate-crimes. The news item and comment board are here at the Post Star, published in Glens Falls, NY. Here’s what happened: “A Hudson Falls man [age 19] was charged with two misdemeanors, one of them brought under the state’s hate crime statute, [...]

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Words serve mouths, and not the other way around. Words survive only because they feed the mouths they serve. Where they survive to the detriment of people usually means that some people derive benefits from them at the costs of others. What I mean is, I think people are creatures of logic, defined as algorithms [...]

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I came across this hiiiiilaaaaarious blog by college student Nicola McEldowney: The Snark Ascending. Here are some of her reflections on higher education. A quote: So this got pretty bad. Bad to the point that, when on the first day of classes, you entered a new classroom and encountered a new professor of the female [...]

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The following quote is from my local Town of Milton newsletter, a column entitled “From the Animal Control Officer” by R.P.: “New York State Ag & Markets Law requires dogs to wear their dog license and rabies tags at all times. When your dog wears his license tag, it makes it easier to identify your [...]

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[4/2/09 -- I have since had a few discussions about the IAT with a professor emeritus in the Linguistics department at the university where I'm working on my PhD. He is sympathetic to my view, but he rather roundly refuted my objections to the validity of the test. I'll revise the following when I get [...]

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I saw a little video “news” item that I found very irritating called Should women rule the world? (from the aptly-named source Yahoo News, 2/13/09). In sum, it suggests that we all might be better off if there were more women on Wall Street. It goes like this… We’re shown scenes of frenzied traders or [...]

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The newsman’s suit and tie, and the way he “signs off” by saying his name, mark his legitimacy and authority. This is the same author-ity we ascribe to the printed word and other mass media. How else can we denote legitimacy and authority? A “slacker dude” in shorts and a t-shirt who uses slang and [...]

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I was listening to my mother talk recently and noticed that nearly everything she says is clearly labeled. That is, if she is talking about a person, it’s clear whether that person wears a white hat or a black hat. This kind of information is clear even in her silences: she won’t mention, for instance, [...]

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When I was growing up, the distinction between the oppressed and their oppressors was as clear to me as the distinction between cowboys and Indians, cops and crooks, Tom and Jerry, and liberals and conservatives. As clear as these binary pairs appeared, the distinction was meaningless except that I knew which one to root for [...]

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One night I was awakened by shouts outside my window. The only reason I can remember verbatim what was being shouted was that I had my tape recorder by my bed — but then the apartment was so small, everything was by my bed. I recorded the slurred, hoarse threats shouted in Chicago black vernacular [...]

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