It's not a hard defense to make. While the misconception of the "wussy" poet is common in America, I know from internationals I've talked to that it's a decidedly American misconception, a manifestation of the tired idea that men should only express their feelings while drunk or during football games lest they appear, you know, weak. Sure. Were Wilfred Owen and history's long litany of soldier poets weak? Is Iraq war vet Bryan Turner, who just published Here, Bullet, a book of poems about the war, not tough enough? Tell him he's not a fighter.

Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence. This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say.

Cindy Simmons is a lecturer of First Amendment law. She feels it's her duty to reinforce the secular voice in public spaces and to balance out the chorus of baby Jesus songs and snowman medleys. So for the past six years, Cindy and a small following--six secular carolers and a puppy--have taken to caroling songs by the Eagles. Reporter Jeremy Richards has our story.

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"When a jet flies low overhead, every glass in the cupboard sings. Feelings are like that: choral, not single; mixed, never pure. The sentimentalist may want to deny the sadness of boredom in his happiness, or the freedom that lightens even the worst loss. The moralist will resist his faint complicity. The sophisticate, dreading to be found naïve, will exlaim upon the traces of vanity or lust in any motive, as if they were the whole. Each is selling himself simplicity; each is weakened with his fear of weakness."

-- James Richardson, Vectors