Kiva project update: our fifth loan

Hello Cromrades,

Once again it’s time to throw our money at a problem and see if we can’t make someone’s life a little better. Sadly (?), the loans that you suggested were already fully funded when I checked (less than 48 hours after you made the suggestion, I swear). So I just went with our general theme of prioritizing African women, and then going on an ad-hoc basis for everything else.

Here’s the result: [Read more…]

SSA Blogathon songathon: Highway 61 Revisited

Here’s a little fact that most of you probably don’t know about me: I hate Bob Dylan’s music. Not only do I hate Bob Dylan’s music, but I don’t understand anyone who likes it. I recognize that everyone has their own preferences when it comes to something as subjective and personal as music, but Bob Dylan is just objectively terrible. Thus, I have to assume that Brad Self was either punishing or trolling me when he asked me to play this:

EDIT: I have uploaded this three times and every time it has this 2-second delay. I apologize, but I don’t know how to fix it. The original video file is not delayed.

Compare this to the original here (or don’t… because of how awful Bob Dylan is).

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The new coolest part of my job…

…is that I get invited to participate in stuff like this:

For those of you who somehow managed to miss it on the other FTBlogs, yesterday a group of us, along with Rebecca Watson of Skepchick, convened online to host the first (and, judging by the response from the other folks, not the last) Google+ hangout forum. We were discussing, among other things, sexual harassment at skepty/athie conferences like The Amazing Meeting, and specifically the piss-poor way in which DJ Grothe of JREF was handling the issue.

It practically goes without saying that I enjoyed the shit out of myself.

I said it jokingly, but I was serious in my self-appraisal as someone who was more or less a dispassionate third-party observer. I don’t really have a dog in this fight – I wasn’t ever planning on going to TAM, and it had nothing to do with any kind of sexual harassment policy. It just doesn’t really interest me a great deal – the stuff that I care about doesn’t really fall under TAM’s umbrella, and unless the JREF decides to suddenly adopt a radically different mission in life, I don’t see that changing. This isn’t a criticism – TAM should keep doing what has apparently been a very successful event – it just means that I don’t really care either way if TAM succeeds. I’ve therefore intentionally stayed out of the discussion, because I don’t really have that much to contribute besides saying “I agree with Stephanie Zvan” until my vocal chords are hoarse.

That being said, I did have two main points that I wished to contribute to the discussion around this issue: [Read more…]