Spanish beats out others including Urdu, Cantonese, Gaellic for the #2 spot

Pew reports "Spanish is the most spoken non-English language in U.S. homes". In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning and is projected to set in the west later this evening.

In seriousness, predictable social data like these are valuable, even when they're not 'controversial'. But while Pew is deserving of admiration for its acts of data-reporting commission, it often disappoints by way of omission.

Case in point in this very report, conveniently enough. After spending a seemingly inordinate amount of time on the tangential non-Hispanic Spanish speaking population in the US (numbering 2.8 million, compared to the country's 34.8 million Hispanic Spanish speakers), the report closes by informing us about English language proficiency rates of non-Hispanics who speak Spanish in their homes (2.8 million) and of non-Hispanics who do not speak Spanish in their homes (roughly 290 million):

When it comes to English proficiency, eight-in-ten (80%) non-Hispanics who speak Spanish at home say they speak English “very well”, 11% say they speak English “well”, and 9% say they speak English “not well” or do not speak English. This compares with 96% of all non-Hispanics 5 years and older who speak English only or speak it “very well”, 2% who speak English “well”, and 2% who speak English “not well” or do not speak English.

Leaves something to be desired, doesn't it? We get nationwide English language proficiency rates but with the glaring exclusion of the 34.8 million Spanish-speaking Hispanics residing in the US, the figure most readers--especially Dark Enlightenment types like us--are presumably the most curious about.

I've asked the authors to provide a similar breakdown of English proficiency rates among Hispanic Spanish speakers in the US. The comment thread is quite manageable and it looks fairly interactive between readers and the reports' authors, so feel free to ask for the same data I've asked for. Strength in numbers!

All the freaks are on parade

Black and African-American are in, Negro and Colored are out. Hispanic is still acceptable, but Latino is where the zeitgeist is headed (no matter if actual Latinos prefer the term "Hispanic" over the term "Latino"--they're just pawns in the game of white moral posturing, after all). Oriental has been tasteless for generations now, we describe them as Asian.

What about gays? That's the default identifier I employ. Do I need a few good lashings from the PC o' nine tails to straighten (heh) me out? From Google's Ngram viewer, the percentages of books published in the US containing each of six nouns recognizably identifying those who are into others of the same sex, in their plural forms to avoid sweeping up confounding adjectives:

Good thing I'm not always as clinical in my thinking as I should be--homosexual is on the way out and gay is about to take the top spot. Apparently it's what the buggers prefer, so far be it from me to protest.

Sapphic and sodomist, barely identifiable on the graph, have become even less apropos over time. Prior to the second half of the 20th century, not much was written about gays at all. Society said if you're going to do whatever you want to do, fine, but do it behind closed closet doors. We now recognize that for being the hidebound, retrograde stuff that it was, though, as we celebrate alternative lifestyles, striving relentessly to bring them out in plain view!

Human biodiversity needs you!

In a recent Taki's column, the Derb parenthetically notes the unfortunate competition for primacy of the acronym HBD that the phrase "human biodiversity" shares with the phrase "happy birthday".

Nothing against congratulating people for managing to survive another year, but the former phrase is enhanced by the abbreviation while the latter is cheapened by it. Human biodiversity doesn't have a wikipedia page yet, but HBD does have an urban dictionary entry, albeit a shared one.

I'd grown complacent after human biodiversity easily attained the top spot shortly after its debut over a year ago, but subsequently (possibly as a result of the tripe Derb examined in his article), happy birthday retook the summit, in large part due to a slew of negative votes for human biodiversity. Help keep our version of HBD on top by dropping in to vote human biodiversity up and happy birthday down.

HBD

... now shows human biodiversity as the first definition at Urban Dictionary. Nice work again, everyone.

HBD, defined

Half Sigma asks "What are you doing about HBD-denialism?"

Creating definitions in the Urban Dictionary, that's what! Hey, it's something, at least. And voting these definitions to the top of their respective entries is something any reader is able to do right now, by going here and clicking on the thumbs-up for what is currently definition #7 [now at #2--keep pushing!], which reads as follows:

An acronym that stands for human biodiversity. It is the acknowledgement and study of how humans differ from each other on both the individual and group levels because of differences in genotype. Differences include, but are not limited to, personality traits, athletic ability, intelligence, height, health, and physical appearance.

"What are some things that HBD informs us on?"

"Why professional sports leagues like the NBA and NFL are dominated by people of West African descent, why blacks and Hispanics consistently perform more poorly on all forms of cognitive testing than whites and Asians do, and why the Amerindian immigrants mowing lawns in the suburbs are so much shorter than the residents of those suburbs, just to name a few."

We propelled NAM to the top in a matter of weeks, displacing the entry specifying the Southeast Asian country. The acronym for "happy birthday" is even more formidable, but I'm confident it's reign at the top is on borrowed time!

NAM as non-Asian minority

... now constitutes the first entry in the Urban Dictionary. Great work everybody!

NAM, defined

The Steveosphere has created some catchy and useful acronyms, but they're mostly just used in-house, otherwise unfamiliar to the broader public. Well, one way to induce thinking about HBD is to raise awareness* of some of its unique terminology. I've created the following entry for NAM in the Urban Dictionary:

An acronym that stands for non-Asian minority, usually used to more accurately describe a person who is referred to as a member of a minority group in mainstream media or popular discourse. It is necessitated by the general success and prosperity of Asians in the United States, who do as well or better on a host of social indicators than whites do. Thus when a media figure discusses the economic or educational struggles of a minority, he is almost always referring to a NAM, or a non-Asian minority.



"The minority income gap in the US has only gotten worse since the recession!"



"You mean the NAM income gap has gotten worse. Asians are actually doing even better relative to whites than they were before the recession."

It's competing with nine other definitions. Most of them are garbage, but one of them--the Southeast Asian country--is the formidable king of the hill. If you feel so inclined, help knock it from the head of the heap and propel the non-Asian minority definition to the top by dropping in and clicking on the thumbs-up icon, currently the fourth entry shown.



* Happily, SWPL is already firmly established at UD.

Conservative or traditionalist?

Ed Tom Kowalsky wondered if "traditionalist" has made any headway as a synonym for "conservative". The frequencies of each, pluralized, among all books published in the US over the last century:





I'm surprised to find that the term, while far less common than "conservative", was being used a century ago. I was under the impression that it was pretty new, employed by guys like Bill O'Reilly who try to position themselves as patriotic populists without appearing to be overly political, but that's not the case, as it predates the no spin zone by more than a generation. "Traditionalist" experienced an uptick during the cultural upheaval of the sixties (as did "conservative"), but has maintained steady state since then.

Liberal or progressive?

It's asserted with some frequency that using "liberal" as a political label carries with it too much baggage, and consequently those on the left have increasingly opted to self describe as "progressive" instead. In his syndicated column, Pat Buchanan recently made reference to this.



Living in the center of the country, thousands of miles away from the trend-setters on the coasts, I realize that I may as well be living in a time machine, but I have never noticed much in the way of execution of that label switching in my own personal experiences.



Via Google's Ngram viewer, take a look at the frequency of the terms "liberals" and "progressives" (used instead of "liberal" and "progressive" to avoid errant counting of non-political occurrences of the two words) in books published in the US over the last century:





"Liberal" enjoyed rapid ascension during the thirties and then again in the sixties, but the Carter Presidency and Reagan Republicanism put it back in its pre-hippie place. Since then, it's been steady as she goes. "Progressive", meanwhile, like "liberal", became a familiar enough term during the Great Depression and the FDR presidency. It has remained steadily so since then, but over the course of the last 100 years has never come close to supplanting "liberal" as the term of choice to describe those somewhere on the left end of the American political spectrum.

I'm reasonably certain that's where we're at

By nitpicking, I'm opening the door for "pot calling the kettle black" and SWPL quips. Further, I'm of the opinion that commentators who add substantively meaningless phrases designed to show humility when making assertions are unnecessarily making their readers read more than they need to. We know you're not the ultimate arbiter of all things to all people. It's your take based on the reason you've employed, the data you've marshaled, and the passion you've embedded in your delivery. The "in my opinion, ..." is stating what is already assumed unless you've indicated otherwise.

That said, I listened to two podcasts today, one via EconTalk with Bryan Caplan and the other via AltRight Radio with Trace Mayer. Caplan said (starts at 54:25) the following in a discussion about F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit:

It's not that businesses need certainty about the rules, but a reasonable amount
of certainty.

A "reasonable amount of certainty"? The standard definition of certain being "free from doubt or reservation; confident; sure", the question of certainty is a dichotomous one. Something is either certain or it is uncertain; it cannot be somewhat certain.

In a span of less than 40 minutes, Mayer demonstrates poor English language usage not just once, or only twice, but thrice, in each case saying "...that's where we are at" instead of "that's where we are".

While we're on the topic, a couple other frequent errors I regularly come across:

- "Nevermind" instead of "never mind". The former is close to an antonym of the latter. Used correctly, it is approaching obsolescence. Parenthetically, I was made aware of this several months ago by an astute reader who called me out on my frequent use of "nevermind" when I meant "never mind".

- "Peruse" as an indication of brevity when it should be expressing the giving of great attention to detail. When I peruse an article, I'm not just skimming it but instead am reading through it thoroughly.

And yes, despite being guilty of it, I'm aware that freely switching between first-, second-, and third-person is considered bad, er, poor form.

* In the Steveosphere, that is. In the texting and Facebook worlds, these complaints would be dwarfed by far more elementary mistakes such as the use of "your" as the contraction of "you are" and "there" as the contraction of "they are".