(Roughly) Daily

By the time Ralph finished blowing the conch, a large crowd had formed.

“Well, then,” he said, clearing his throat. “First rule: we can’t have everyone talking at once.”

 Jack was on his feet. “We’ll have rules!” he yelled excitedly. “Lots of rules!”

Ralph explained, “We need to have ‘hands up,’ like at school. Then I’ll pass the conch.”

“Conch?” someone asked.

“That’s what this shell’s called,” Ralph said. “I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it while he’s speaking. And he won’t be interrupted, except by me.”

“Just because we’re stranded doesn’t give you the right to use non-inclusive language,” Jack said.

The littluns muttered in assent.

“Uh, O.K.,” Ralph said. “So he or she can hold this conch when he or she is …”

“He or she,” a littlun cried, “imposes a binary view of sexuality that excludes the gender-non-conforming.”…

Read the terrifying tale in its entirety at “Politically Correct ‘Lord of the Flies’”

* William Golding, Lord of the Flies

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As we celebrate civilization, we might recall that it was on this date in 1898 that Hannibal Goodwin, an Episcopal priest at the House of Prayer Episcopal Church and Rectory in Newark, New Jersey, patented a method for making transparent, flexible roll film out of celluloid (a nitrocellulose film base), which was used in Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, an early device for viewing movies.

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