She only had two boys; and, trumour has it, she even knocked Herb around the block a time or two in Winnipeg, aussi. Ughly!

Dawkins can take comfort in knowing that Christian fundamentalists are with him on this one. Next, of course: all that irrational Greek mythology crap…

Investors?

From an interview with Ursula Le Guin:

http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=4880

“SiTW : When did the singular “they” fall out of written English ? It’s nice to be able to defend the practice.

Ursula : Grammarians in the 17th and 18th century, trying to kind of cut a common path through the wild jungle of Elizabethan English, regularised a lot of usages—including spelling—not a bad idea in itself ; but they admired Latin so much they used it as their model, rather than looking at how English actually solved some of these problems. “The reader” or “A person” doesn’t agree in number with “they,” and in Latin it is genuinely necessary that subject and verb agree in number . . . so they said it was necessary in English. (Actually it isn’t always, because we have other ways of making the meaning clear, like word order, which is almost irrelevant in Latin.) So colloquial usages such as “he don’t” (which my father, a professor, sometimes used) were frowned out of the written language, and so was the indefinite “they,” even though it turns up in Shakespeare. But the grammarians couldn’t get it out of the spoken language. It is perfectly alive and well there. “If anybody wants their icecream they better hurry up !” So it doesn’t take an awfully big jolt to just slip it back into written English.

It is funny how the people who object most furiously to “incorrectness” like that almost always turn out to be far right politically and/or socially insecure.”

We contain multitudes. Our genitalia are cut and paste accessories.