This is a really interesting take on why we like repetition in music and how it relates to our cognition. (no, the author is no relation but I was at the SEM NEH seminar with her a few years ago and I'm using her new book in my Sound and Noise in American History class).
You can't have a sexually explicit license plate in Virginia, but you can have an anti-Muslim one . If the Department of Motor Vehicles is going to let people praise certain religions or ethnicities on their license plates, it also must let people denigrate individuals of those faiths and nationalities. That's the opinion of a Circuit Court judge, who ruled last week that part of the DMV's guidelines governing vanity tags is unconstitutional. The ruling stemmed from an appeal from an Iraq War veteran who disagreed with the state's decision last year to revoke his personalized plates, which read "ICUHAJI." "Haji" is a common and often derogatory term for Arabs used by U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The veteran's attorney, however, said his client did not intend to offend anyone. Judge John W. Brown wrote in his ruling that the DMV must either return the license plates - which can be read, "I see you, Ha...
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