Sorry about the fluff

I promise I’ll get back shortly to ranting about sexism, racism, religious fundamentalism, wars of aggression, and American politics’ promotion thereof. But for now let me just note a few more things:

1. Health care update: I still haven’t gotten the referral I need. But I have an appointment for 5:20 that should give me that.

2. One of the things I didn’t notice about the accent quiz I just linked to is that it omits African-American accent. Even without Ebonics grammar, black Americans usually have a distinctive, nationally uniform accent, which would register as Northeastern on the quiz on account of its relative lack of vowel mergers (but it’s still closer to Southern).

3. Speaking of “African-American,” a while ago SLC said he preferred to use “black” because it wasn’t hyphenated. Personally I don’t distinguish between them when it’s clear that the context is American, so I tend to use the shorter term. But sometimes it’s important to distinguish the American ethnic group from the race(s): hence, I never say “black accent,” “black English,” etc.

4. If I don’t write any real post today, check out Belledame’s commentary on an essay of Orwell’s on Tolstoy and Lear, which connects to the issues of totalitarian ideologies, pleasure, and coercion. Even if I do write something real, read Belledame’s post.