Sri Lanka vs Darfur: How We Read Conflict

*(reader note: since lots of my recent traffic seems to have an infants sense of irony, I’m marking anything I said ironic  with asterisks. ****)
I was asked in an interview recently why the Sri Lankan conflict (which has about 1/2 the deaths + 1/3 of the refugees of the Darfur crisis – 95% of the [...]

Terrorist, moi? Why the Maya Arulpragasam LTTE-drama is NYT Tiger-shit

The fact that it takes an emphatically pregnant young rapper who samples Bollywood and AK47s, writes songs about Bird Flu and does Day-Glo animal-print schizophrenia as an ethos rapping with Jay-Z on her due date to make us stand up and take notice of a conflict an order of magnitude more deadly than the one in Gaza should say something about us, not her.

A very moving letter from Rabbi Avi Rabin of Chabad

B”H

Dear Friends,

Our hearts are shattered at the news from Mumbai where Rabbi Gabi and Rivka Holtzberg, [...]

Let it fucking snow…

Today, I experienced my first New York City snow. If it hadn’t been so flipping weird (hello, it’s not even November) it might have been almost magical. The look on Laura’s face certainly was. The smile  when we stepped outside the building—priceless. So was the next moment, when she whipped out her calling card and [...]

The Associated Press: G-d is G-d

“It’s the same G-d” —TJK, AP
 I have learned more about the formation of the English language in AP lecture than I have in probably my entire career and all my studies of English and foreign language. Last night, for example, I learned that, according to the Associate Press, G-d is G-d, G-d is one. Clearly, this [...]