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The English language is constantly changing…and I try to roll with it.   The word yahoo once described a race of brutish creatures in Gulliver’s Travels.  Then it was used to describe crass and stupid people “what a bunch of yahoos”  Now… it’s a website. It’s email.  And for that matter… google only became a word within the last 20 years.

So I try to keep up… but when it comes to words that used to be good… and now they’re bad.. it’s a little harder to break habits.

This summer I understood when the entomological society of America changed the name of the gypsy moth.  Because its a slur against the Romani people.  Inferring that like the moths… Romanis strip everything they can and then move.  I get it.

But when I hear you can’t talk about shark attacks anymore… I can’t quite get there.  In Australia… oceonographers have stopped using the term… shark attack.  Because it makes us hate sharks at a time when their population is dwindling…. and might disappear.  Better to call them shark incidents… or shark encounters.  if we soften the language …they think we’ll want to save the sharks that serve as a vital role of the ocean ecoysystem.

In Massachussets Brandeis University has come up with a list of terms to avoid.  

I get that you should avoid the term “rule of thumb.”  Rule of Thumb supposedly comes from an old british law allowing men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than your thumb.  But there’s no evidence that is true.

Brandeis also says you should avoid the term picnic.  Because people would supposedly picnic while watching lynchings in the south.  

If this ban against the word picnic triggers you…you can’t use the term trigger warning at brandeis… because a trigger references guns and violence.

What a bunch of yahoos.

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