Okay, folks. Let’s sit down and have a chat about privilege. Yes, again. But before we can discuss privilege, we need to discuss jargon and language specificity. Why? Because the thing that’s driving me batty about people discussing “privilege” is the use of (what at least should be) a narrowly-defined tool as a general-purpose one. A pin- ( Read more... )

The other day, I read about a new LJ community specifically for abused women. In the group's formation blurb, they said "we're restricting this comm to women only, because abused women need a place to talk safe from men and their men-opinions ( Read more... )

It all boils down to a simple fact and qualifier: Marx was right, but only from certain perspectives ( Read more... )

me: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20100516000057data_trunc_sys.shtml interesting....war on drugs is really a war on casual sex by proxy?
Altaz: I thought it was a war on hippies and minorities
me: well, them, too, I guess.
Altaz: Maybe hippies are having too much casual sex with minorities?
Guess who's coming to the orgy?

On the one hand, ( Read more... )

Now for a more complicated example.

Back in the 18th Century the Polish sage, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote a collection of parables called Stories of Deeds (which he titled in Hebrew, and wrote in a blend of Hebrew and Yiddish). [And yes, I know, saying that R' Nachman wrote a collection of stories is like saying Martin Luther King made a ( Read more... )

Welcome to the latest lecture on the Black Arts of Cataloging! (or: why sane people never want to deal with bibliographic records)

We start in the Renaissance, when Rabbi Chayim Vital wrote a condensation of The Ari's teachings, in a book called Gates of Holiness. (which he of course, wrote and titled in Hebrew ( Read more... )

even if I've not been posting much of it the past year or so. I need to revive more of the dormant themes of my past blogging ( Read more... )

Not News: School parents are protesting the contents of their children's curriculum.
News: Demanding teachers not instruct students about democracy, nor refer to the United States (or their native state of Utah) as democracies.

Why? because they're republics, not democracies...and what's more, Karl Marx himself referred to democracy as "the road ( Read more... )

Proving that he was of a far better class of person than Richard "why aren't you grateful to me for pointing out your weakness for believing in a nonexistent God?" Dawkins:

"...If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think ( Read more... )

...and what happens when all you're given is half of a quote.

See, way back in 1984, at the first Hackers' conference, a man named Stewart Brand uttered what has become the most commonly-cited half-quote in the anti-copyright/copyleft movement: "information wants to be free."Problem is, he really didn't say it the way everyone quotes him is using ( Read more... )