Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett both passed away within the past couple of days. The latter seems to be largely ignored, overshadowed by the former. As for responses to the former, I've seen a couple people celebrating his death, and they all seem to use the word "freak" in doing so*. I remember in one of my classes in college, the professor ( Read more... )

During the week or two leading up to Passover my email inbox included a number of links to alternative haggadot/haggadah supplements. While I didn't really have a reason to compile them before the holiday (except, uh, for the benefit of others...), I'd like to have a listing for future reference in case at some point I actually hold my own seder, ( Read more... )

Domestically, the Jew-ligans (thanks to eumelia  for the term!) are continuing their bigotry-based violence, though there's at least some police response.  Luckily, someone realized that if you use bombs against the left-wing Jewish Israelis you need to find something even more extreme to use against the Arab Israelis (after all, you can't mistreat Arabs ( Read more... )

I spent a good bit of time looking through this year's IBARW posts for inspiration.  Here are some I especially liked and thought y'all might find interesting:
On racial privilege
On privilege and intersectionality: " The n-Dimensional Privilege Graph"
On passing: " 'The Tannest White Girl I Know': Life In The Passing Lane"
On whiteness, among other ( Read more... )

As I mentioned a few days ago, it's International Blog Against Racism week, a.k.a.
( Read more... )

Apparently my sister, in addition to her school librarian duties and her coursework to turn her provisional librarian license into a permanent one, is teaching a math class indefinitely (i.e. until they succeed in hiring more than one of the three teachers for whom they were searching this summer). Wish her luck (though it's a course she's taught ( Read more... )

Updated last night's entry such that it references the return of the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (pending identification), but to be more explicit about it...Israel and HizbAllah made a deal wherein Israel will release some Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping triggered the 2006 ( Read more... )

So it's now my birthday by about a half-hour.  And friends from my program were really cute/sweet about it.  So the story: I'm not a big birthday person, most years I go out to dinner with a friend or two and that's it.  So I asked a friend a few days ago what she was doing Monday night, and while she couldn't make it insisted on taking me out to ( Read more... )

Happy Pi Day!

....What, you wanted an actual entry? ;)

Apparently a Hampshire alumn. got killed by a car riding her bike on the main street through campus. If any of you knew the woman, you have my condolences.

( So...the biggest event that's happened since I last updated is Michelle's (and Rory's) wedding reception (the east coast re-mix, as Stryer put it). )