A word that needs to be left behind

On the CNN front page today there was an article-teaser I object to:



Coed? What is this, the 1970's? To their credit the actual article is titled, "Underwear left near body, possibly a taunt to police," which is much more acceptable. But, coed?

"Coed" is short for "Co-educational". It came into use to describe students of the opposite gender being educated along side the traditional gender at institutions of higher ed that formerly were single-gender only. As the prevalence of all-male colleges were much higher than the all-female variety, 'coed,' came to be synonymous with "college-aged female".

I object to 'coed' as a synonym of woman. Its use as a descriptor of a place of education is much more acceptable; for instance, the US military academies went co-ed in 1976. When used as a proxy for 'woman' it implies that women in higher education are something to be noted, as if they didn't belong there until recently. It is a form of condescension, and should be scrubbed from common usage. I would be very happy if I never saw it used by a news outlet ever again.

Update: It would seem on first glance that CNN may have caught some flack about it. Right now it shows:



However, the title of the article is now, "Underwear found near co-ed's body possibly left to taunt police."

Sigh

What to do with a tax refund

According to CNN, the Senate just passed the economic stimulus package passed by the House (plus some changes). Passage is expected to be 'swift'.

We've already discussed what our $1200 is going to be used for. It'll be used to pay for an unfunded federal mandate: a digital TV.

In case you hadn't heard, the FCC is forcing over the air television broadcasts to go all digital real soon now. HD TV is a digital signal, and is the one remaining reason households have TV antennas in this modern era of cable and satellite TV. What the feds are not doing is paying for new TVs, instead they gave the TV stations long enough to get there that 'market forces' would force the change.

And it kind of has. A lot of my friends have HD TV now. The 'early adopters' out there, who plonked down $2000+ for a TV, may need to upgrade though. Those people who still have analog TVs can use a converter box to switch the signals. Those of us with cable or satellite TV already have one, and we won't even notice the change.

We're still using the same 27" CRT we bought in December of 1998. Works great, and fits in the entertainment center. This federal windfall is something we can use to upgrade it, though. It'll pay for the TV and part of a new entertainment center since the current one won't support the now-default widescreen form-factor. See us, stimulating the economy of two countries!

Addendum: It would appear that the Feds ARE subsidizing some of the conversion.