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Another run-down of things I'm reading right now. I'm categorizing them again so that "liberal" issues like racism and violence against women are easier for some of you to scroll past.

RACE

The Right Reacts to Powell Endorsement. Turns out Powell just saw a black man and said, "Yeah! That'll do!" I mean, I understand that they have to find a way to disqualify the endorsement of one of the most respected Republicans left in this country, but couldn't they have thought of anything better than simply pointing out that they're both black?

What kind of "Election Day unrest" are we talking about? I can't even summarize this one. But it's worth reading.

White Guys and the Prospect of an Obama Presidency "What I predict will change the most about racism under an Obama presidency is that the white guys wearing the Obama buttons will refuse to take racism seriously." Racism happens. Despite fears from some, that's not going to stop. Jessie points out some measures of racial inequality that won't be changed by Obama's election, but will be easier to ignore (not that people don't do just fine ignoring them already).

McCain supporters reveal racism, and while they're much much worse than Obama's supporters, the latter are not exempt either.

CLASS

Palin: American Taxpayers Aren't Patriotic. Look at Alaska's tax system and tell me she's learned anything useful running it. They don't even pay taxes there, but can run their state on the generosity of oil companies and federal *gasp* earmark dollars.

Higher Ed and the New New Deal. What would happen if public colleges and universities were free?

WOMEN

NY Shelters Will Be Reimbursed For Helping Undocumented Victims of Intimate Partner Violence. I know there are people on my friends list who hate nothing more than they hate the idea of illegal immigrants getting anything from Americans, but some of us are glad of this.

The original article is here. It mentions, "Though there are many economic and psychological reasons women linger with men who beat them, a shadowy immigration status makes it even harder to break away. Five women in the two shelters told me they had feared going to the police, because they worried that that could lead to deportation. Even if they sought to do so, the women said, their companions or husbands would have threatened to betray them to immigration officials."

LAPD allows over 200 rape cases to pass the statute of limitations without testing the rape kits. Fuck you, too, LA. Seriously.

MISC. ELECTION

Socialists: Obama no Socialist. Red-baiting is less effective when real socialists can publicly disagree with you, isn't it?

Be careful. First sociopaths kill animals. Bear cub was shot, and its body left with Obama signs stuck over its head.

Republicans heckling voters. Not politicians. Voters. At least they didn't slash their tires, vandalize any voter registration offices, beat any journalists to the ground, or otherwise attack anybody. No one was lynched in effigy, either. So I suppose we should be grateful that they're only yelling.

The Courts. What the USSC will really look like under Pres. McCain, or Pres. Obama.

Irony Alert: GOP Political Consultant Arrested For Voter Registration Fraud.

SCIENCE!

Do the use of hand gestures slow language learning?

im in ur langwidge, corruptin ur grammr

It's Like, IMing Is So Like Talking

So some linguists have been studying how similarly people approach IM conversations to the way they approach verbal ones. They did this by tracking linguistic trends that at one point were almost purely verbal, such as the quotative "like." People only used to use that in verbal speech, using more formal verbs such as "said," but now it's becoming really common in instant messenger conversations as well.

Instant messaging, a synchronous form of typed, computer-mediated communication, is becoming more conversational, blurring the divide between face-to-face speech and writing, suggests a new study.

Evidence for the change includes the growing use of forms of "to be" combined with the word "like," as in, "He was like, 'It's so interesting.'" The practice is commonly known as "Valley Girl speak," but linguists refer to it as "be + like" or "quotative like."

"What we document is the use of quotative like in spontaneous writing, where people are using it -- a lot -- as a tool for quoting the speech and thought of themselves and others," co-author Bambi Schieffelin told Discovery News.

"What this suggests is that IMers experience the activity of IMing as very similar to face-to-face talk," she added. "Indeed, we find that they go out of their way to develop styles of writing that make IM more like talk."

Another interesting point is what happens when you introduce speakers who have very specific opinions about what constitutes proper English. I know that I've had debates with my friends before over proscriptive versus descriptive linguistics, and it's interesting how many people advocate proscriptive language and still use the quotative "like," which isn't actually correct from that perspective. The descriptive perspective is given in this article, and there are some shades of meaning that are conveyed by the more general "to be+like" as opposed to "said," or "asked."

That's really just a tangent, though. The main thing is that typed communication is starting to take on the habits of spoken communication. Considering that people have been cursing the internet for corrupting "proper" English, it's something of a surprise to see the corruption of instant messenger conversations by a uniquely-verbal sloppiness.

It's like... how neat is that?