The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer says conservative Evangelical Christians view President Obama as “the avatar of godless socialism”. Do American Christian conservatives use ‘socialist’ to mean ‘insufficiently religious’? If so, their usage parallels that of Osama bin Laden.
Record fans insist that the plural of ‘vinyl’ to mean “a vinyl record” is the zero-plural ‘vinyl’. This irregular form serves as a shibboleth for audiophiles. Since the form was regular (‘vinyls’) during the 1960s, I conjecture that the irregular form must have arisen relatively recently.
Chad Nilep reflects on work with Akiyo Cantrell to analyze reports from the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and its aftermath. Evacuees from Fukushima face discrimination based on vague fears of radioactivity or other danger. Nilep expresses hope that academic work can make a positive contribution to recovery.