Dennis Baron

European Parliament to rule that anything called a sausage, burger, or cutlet must contain meat. No veggie sausages.

Jim Hacker complains in 1984 episode of Yes, Prime Minister, the the EU will standardize the eurosausage, making the British banger illegal.

The euro sausage strikes again...

It's that old marketplace of ideas, where the shopkeeper always has a thumb on the scale.

Guardian cryptic crossword clue reads "Stupid effin' old man's twittering nonsense?" Answer is covfefe

5 across No visa for you, Paul.

not to mention the 1% of atheists who are expecting him any minute. but sure. whatever.

A blue heron in a small stream

Waiting to see if last night's rain means fish might be back ....

New York Times Spelling Bee says godot is not a word.

That's ok, 🐝, I can wait.

Xword first ran in the New York Times on July 23, 1951, p. 15. h/t Ben Zimmer.

This was the S F Chronicle June 22 1955

crossword puzzle from the Brooklyn Eagle, 1930

And this earlier crossword, from the Brooklyn Eagle in 1930, asks readers for three, count 'em, three, genderless pronouns.

Thon was coined by C.C. Converse as early as 1858 and in use since it was publicized in 1884. Although well past its prime, thon did have advocates through the 1970s. The puzzle is credited to the NY Times but did not run on that day, June 22, or on the day before.

A crossword puzzle June 22, 1995.

Pronouns in the news, 1955 edition: The clue for 27 across, "proposed third-person genderless pronoun," assumes that at least some solvers will be familiar with "thon."

new york times spelling bee says hwaet is not a word.

opening of Beowulf: hwæt we gardena...

🐝 the speardanes would like a word...

The amendment proposed was, that wherever the word "she" occurred in this instrument, it should be construed to mean jointly "he or she." Thus: did a man happen to become President, Secretary or other officer of the band, it would be proper to term him "she," with a profound indifference and contempt for the nature of his sex.

Pronouns in the news, 1869 edition: San Francisco Woman Suffrage Society votes on use of generic "she" to refer to men who join. When that proposal failed, the group settled on "he or she." SF Chronicle, Dec. 26, p. 1.

mostly finished cappuccino.

A particularly photogenic coffee at Plein Air Café

The Scholars' Circle Insight into Today's Most Pressing Issues

Me, on free speech, the flag burning ban, and, oh, did sombody say pronouns? scholarscircle.org

Aerial photograph of two bridges over a body of water

"Uses a variety of research methods to demonstrate how policies that concern language status are inseparable from economics, race, and identity politics."

Making English Official by Katherine S. Flowers | Out Now & #OpenAcccess

https://cup.org/4m0J21C

#LangSky 🐦🐦 🗺️ #Linguistics

Bayeux Tapestry panel: harold interfectus est

My review of King & Conqueror: Wait for the tapestry.

even without bollocks!

Don’t Make English Official, Ban It Instead

What this refers to: blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/1505...; an earlier version appeared in the Washington Post in 1996: www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opin...

Reader fails to identify satire and goes on a diatribe in defense of English.

I get better hate mail than you do.

Donald Trump doesn’t want non-English-speakers to assimilate. He just wants them gone.

Donald Trump doesn’t want non-English-speakers to assimilate. He just wants them gone. First he declared English official. Then his Dept. of Ed dropped support for English language learners. What's next for them? A ticket to Rwanda?
read about it here:
weboflanguage.substack.com/p/donald-tru...

Is a sandwich a weapon? If so, is it protected by the Constitution?

Trying a substack to see if gets more traffic than a blog:

We, as Concerned Legal Lexicographers, submit this declaration in an attempt to answer the question, Is a sandwich a weapon? And if so, is it protected by the Constitution?

weboflanguage.substack.com/p/is-a-sandw...

Plus according to Scalia's view if a sandwich is a weapon. according to the Cunningham definition, then like the handgun it is constitutionally protected.

Plus many of the Framers immediately disagreed about the meaning of the document they had just created!

Ordinary citizen? The Constitution is written at a 15th-grade reading level according to the Flesch-Kincaid scale. Yes there are problems with such scales. The NCES ranks most adult Americans today at something like 7th grade (grade levels are no longer used to measure literacy).

Is a sandwich a weapon enjoying Second Amendment protection? Find out now on the Web of Language:

bit.ly/4lwuF4H

And so we must conclude that yes, a sandwich may indeed be a weapon. Now, as to the question of intent, or mens rea...

And Cunningham (Law Dict., 1764), citing Crompton (On Justices of the Peace, 1593): "Arms, In the understanding of law, are extended to any thing that a man wears for his defence or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another."

According to Bracton (De legibus, ca. 1230), All things by which men may inflict injury are included in the word ‘weapons.’ If one comes unarmed, but during the course of the argument picks up sticks, staves [or] stones, it will be called armed force."

Arms, In the understanding of law, are extended to any thing that a man wears for his defence or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another."

After defining a sandwich (is a hot dog a sandwich? a taco? a blintz?) we must then determine whether a sandwich is a weapon.