The New Republic

One reason the idea of gay marriage, or “marriage equality,” spread so fast is that it seems obvious once you think about it. It was a genuinely new idea when it first appeared in this publication in 1989. As was not the case with civil rights for African Americans, feminism, or for that matter gay rights themselves, there was no long history of opposition to be overcome. The challenge was simply getting people to think about it a bit. READ MORE >>

Handwritten signatures are toast. Kaput. The number of times most of us sign our names on a weekly basis now versus, say, twenty years ago has significantly decreased, and that trend is not going to reverse itself anytime soon. In another twenty years, maybe sooner, you won't be signing anything by hand, ever. And that’s not a bad thing, because the act of name signing has, in many ways, veered into the realm of absurdity and farce. READ MORE >>

The sentence scrawled above was Winston Churchill’s alleged response to the idea that one can’t end a sentence with a preposition, giving this fake grammar rule a particular distinction: Its legendary smackdown is as well known as the rule itself. READ MORE >>

“A decade in America already, I want out.” This tweet of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s has helped fuel speculations that what drove him to mass murder was that America had failed to assimilate him thoroughly enough. READ MORE >>

Last week, when the FBI released wanted pictures of Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, almost immediately, they were dubbed “bros” for their backwards baseball caps and their apparently Caucasian features (which turned out to be, literally, Caucasian). Tweets came fast and furious about “brofiling.” “I hate to brofile, but suspect 2 literally looks like he just got back from a charity kickball greek week mixer,” wrote one user, referring to Dzhokar and his white baseball cap. READ MORE >>

Last week the Associated Press removed the term illegal immigrant from its stylebook. This followed claims, aired with especial insistence since last year, that the term is a disguised slur, designating certain persons as “illegal” in neglect of all else that comprises their personhood. READ MORE >>

Our times can lend ordinary words new shadings. It used to be that one thought of a fossil embedded in rock, but especially since the Iraq War, embed calls most immediately to mind a reporter covering military activity. In the same way, evolution these days is no longer about Darwin and finch beaks. Rather, the public figure opting to espouse a previously controversial position now tells us that their views have "evolved." It is, in truth, a weaselly business. READ MORE >>

Hugo Chávez, the man in the flesh, radiated a freakish degree of energy, as if he were a nuclear reactor, and the freakish radiation had the effect of leaving me startled by the news of his death. The reports of his medical treatments over the past few months had not passed me by. And yet, I had met the man, and, though the meeting was brief, it had left me convinced that mortality’s laws, which are said to be universal, must surely have granted Hugo Chávez an exemption. Cancer issued a decree, even so. It is a lesson to me. READ MORE >>

Did you know that thinking in Korean makes you process life differently than thinking in English? READ MORE >>