Slate!

[Jesse T Sheidlower]

>
> i might have missed mention of it here, but our very own jesse
> sheidlower and dennis baron exchanged e-letters on language in the
> news for four days (monday through thursday) last week on the web
> magazine Slate (http://www.slate.com).  i heard about it through
> a non-linguist friend.
>
> interesting stuff.  i'd like to hear from dennis and jesse about
> how they got involved, what sorts of responses they got, and
> the like.

I have a friend who works for Slate who suggested it to me and
asked me for ideas of who a good interlocutor would be; I
volunteered Dennis, who agreed. And lucky for all of us--he
was just amazing at turning out really good essays as quickly
as necessary, unlike me, stuck with a five-week old to take care
of and unable to finish anywhere near as much as I should have.

The responses are still available on the site, but they were
fairly predictable, across a fairly wide range.

Jesse Sheidlower
<jester at panix.com>