Here’s the BBC news report on the death of Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said.

In the current issue of The Vocabula Review has a great article Singular They: The Pronoun That Came in from the Cold by Jjoan Ttaber Altieri. Grammar, gender, power, class, language mavens, and the third person singular genderless pronouns. It’s actually worth reading, whatever you think. I found this among many other great articles on the current Arts & Letters Daily.

Don’t write “rap poems”. If that’s what the job requires, for goodness sakes turn it down. (Or, at least do a better bloody job of it.) By the way, I side with many of the commenters: it’s embarrassing, and I think it says something about the monarchy that this is what is offered and accepted.