Yes, that is the title of a post in a shitty Minneapolis food blog.

It's like a misogynist, ableist, fatphobic TRIFECTA!

I could also mention that ADA rights are statutory, not constitutional. But that'd be a bit nitpicky.

In other news, I saw orawnzva today, which was very fun, except for when I noticed that the Harvard Coop (the official bookstore) had twice misspelled the word "espresso" as "expresso" on handwritten signs posted outside, and also (on the same sign) written the word "cappuchino." Anywhere else such a misspelling would have been acceptable, I think, but I figure if you're an elitist institution, you should be held to elitist standards.

Also, I'm still studying for the bar, and will continue to be for MORE THAN A MONTH. Ewwwwwww.

I saw Leonard Cohen tonight! It was completely crazyawesome. I've been into him since heronblue introduced me to him in seventh grade. He's in his mid-70s right now and hasn't toured for about 15 years, and his voice is still amazing. I am a fan. I brought this friend of mine who is also a fan, and we sort of squee-d the entire time. I kind of cried a number of times. If this dude ever starts his own religion (which is looking doubtful, but whatever), I wish to subscribe to it. In the meantime I am kind of looking out for a necklace that looks like this book's cover.

Right outside the theater, there were people protesting the fact that he was later playing in Tel Aviv, and trying to get him to cancel his concert. Why, you ask? Apparently, because Israel will use his appearance for propaganda effect and therefore we need a cultural and academic boycott of Israel. Seriously.

Reasons why this is stupid:

( There are at least five of them! )

Incidentally, at some point Leonard Cohen started talking during the concert about how he seemed to have gotten old enough that people cared about his opinion, and so he had something very important to say to us. He had noticed a disturbing trend towards hotels having magnifying mirrors with fluorescent lights all around them. His advice: none of us over the age of eleven should ever, ever look in those mirrors. Just his opinion, though.

I kind of wish that I'd yelled "next year he'll play in Jerusalem!" as I left. Just to be ornery.

Dear lazywebs,

Can anyone read this?

From Drop Box

It's inscribed on a signet ring that I bought in Jerusalem (this drawing is, of course, a mirror image of what's on the ring, since the writing in signet rings is always backwards - this is how it should the actual stamp should look). The vendor claimed it didn't actually say anything, but someone else who saw it said it did but that they didn't read Arabic well enough to read it. I am guessing it's just someone's name, or initials, but it would be cool to know.

(apologies if the letters are messed up somewhat - I couldn't get a good, clear photo of the actual stamp, so I had to copy it freehand)

edit: here's the actual ring, mirror-flipped in photoshop thanks to greyling!

From Israel 2009 #2

I was hoping he'd make it until I got there in the morning. My mother was the only one with him at the time. He started breathing heavily and then just stopped. It was very peaceful. It's a good thing my mother was there, even if he didn't know she was there (it's not too clear) - he really did not want to die alone.

Per his request, he'll be cremated. The memorial service won't be for another month or so, they think. He has family around the world and they are going to schedule it so that people can make plans to fly here.

I am not particularly ready to be consoled by how good the death was, or how ready he was to go, or how he had a full life. I want my grandfather. I have been lucky in that, until now, I've never lost a close family member. But that also means that this is all new to me. I don't feel like I really know what it means for him to not be here.

Going to DC tomorrow.

He is very old and has been progressively deteriorating for several years. Still, I am really devoted to my grandfather, he is the only one I ever had. My father's parents died before I was born. He was always a really sweet guy, and he and my grandmother lived very close to me when I was growing up, so I spent a lot of time at his house. I really idolized him as a kid, and still do. He's a pretty intimidatingly impressive person.

Today is also my dad's 70th birthday.

While in Jerusalem I walked a couple of times past a crumbling, ancient Muslim cemetery. It was clearly very old, and also very much in disuse:

From Israel 2009 #2

( more pictures )

From Israel 2009 #2

Across the street was a building under construction, which the tour guide identified to us as the Palace Hotel - an old hotel that's recently been gutted from the inside, and will be rebuilt with the facade intact.

The guide spent a lot of time talking to us about how great the hotel would be when done, but I spent all my time ignoring him and taking pictures of the cemetery. There were what appeared to be Jewish graves in it as well (note the star of David):

From Israel 2009 #2

I thought perhaps they were two old cemeteries that were partially divided. You can't see in these photos, but there is a street that runs through the two halves of the cemetery, which would be a natural dividing point between Muslim/Jewish sections.

So imagine my surprise that upon reading further about how people are actually trying to build a museum of tolerance on the site of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, I realized that it was the same cemetery I took photos of (note the reference, in comments, to the Palace Hotel).

I'm sort of speechless. I actually think everyone here is acting pretty badly, not just the people trying to build the museum - for one thing, the highest members of the Muslim clergy were perfectly happy 60 years ago to sell part of the cemetery to build a hotel on it, and never complained when, almost 50 years ago, a parking lot was built on the same exact location they're trying to build the Museum of Tolerance on; this article seems to suggest that the museum will not actually encroach on any part that is still cemetery, it will only be on the part that's currently a parking lot. That said, the people complaining now aren't exactly the same people who didn't complain 50 years ago: It's a new generation that can legitimately have different priorities.

That said, for fuck's sake, this is not how you build a Museum of Tolerance. You do not propose to build it on the former cemetery site of a prominent minority with whom you have a rather contentious relationship, then, when they object, resolve it through litigation. While in Israel a number of Israelis I talked to said, with varying degrees of pride or matter-of-factness, that Israelis were not "politically correct" people and this is possibly why Israel has such a "PR" problem. When they weren't native speakers of English, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, figuring that they didn't realize how dismissive their word choice was - Israeli culture is pretty unpolished in a bunch of other ways, and they could have been referring generally to that (a friend of mine who now lives there says that American table manners are much stricter, and that sort of frightens me). But some of them were born in the United States, and I really kinda wanted to punch them in the face. I hate the use of "political correctness" as a dismissive term for what should be called regular human decency.

Oh, and this is clearly not a matter of one culture just valuing cemeteries more than another: if anything, Judaism is far more concerned with maintaining the sacredness of cemeteries than any other Abrahamic religion, which is why you'll read in the above-linked articles references to the ultra-Orthodox community complaining bitterly about this, and significant wads of cash being expended for "teumah pipes" to channel ritual uncleanliness away from the site (wtf?), presumably so that Kohenim can visit. There was a relatively similar incident in Prague, when Czech authorities built a building that encroached a bit onto the Old Jewish cemetery. The community was enraged. There is a plaque there, apologizing for it (but the building is still there).

Also, even if nobody else cared, I would. I love old cemeteries. Just looking at how it is now, full of grass and weeds and semi-toppled headstones, is very sad. Clearly something needs to be done about the cemetery even if nothing is built there (or near there). It is badly damaged already, and has vast swaths of completely empty, overgrown space. But I really loved this cemetery, partially because it was the first time I'd seen Muslim headstones (the two-towers motif is really awesome), partially because I'm just really into such things. Clearly I should have joined this protest, in full goth regalia, with a sign saying "I JUST REALLY LIKE GRAVES!"

A melon baller or ice cream scoop is a really good way to make matzo balls!

Esp. since my recipe involves heating the dough, so using one's hands is either kind of painful, or requires letting the dough sit for way longer than you want to wait.

Now I just have to figure out how to replace the milk (my recipe is Czech, not Jewish). Using water instead lead to insufficiently chewy matzo balls (they didn't fall apart in the soup, but when you bit into them it just didn't feel right). Apparently most Jewish recipes call for just eggs and a little oil (the Czech recipe also called for eggs, which means that the Jewish recipes involve substantially less liquid overall; this makes sense since my dumplings were always a little bit softer than other matzo balls).

I am going to ROCK this soup. Eventually. It's going to be vegetarian, with chanterelle mushrooms, carrots, and SAGE. Sage that I bought from DRUZE ISRAELIS.

Here's a disturbing juxtaposition.

(In other words, I'm too busy to read lj lately, but should catch up soon!)

So out of nowhere, today, I was thinking about LOCUSTS. I actually think about locusts more frequently than you'd think. It's totally amazing that these things still cause mass famine on a regular basis in Africa. They're actually a serious problem.

So anyway, I've read about scientists working tirelessly to figure out just what turns their swarming behavior on (most of the time they're just grasshoppers, but when their population density gets to a certain threshold, they CHANGE COLOR and turn into SWARMING EATING MACHINES (I'm kind of obsessed with animals in swarms. Ever since I was a kid (I think this is why I like Deleuze and Guattari). Just say it: swaaaaaaaaaaaaarm)). This is pretty awesome, but...

I just realized it would be EVEN COOLER to study what makes them decide where to go once they're swarming. Because then, you could totally figure out how to manipulate them! What if you could insert robotic drones into their midst that emitted pheromones, and STEER them all over the place? This sounds like something that an evil scientist would do in order to take over the world, but you could also use this power for good, by steering them all off into the OCEAN! (Locusts, like mosquitos and other upsetting insects, are among the few species of animal that I like the idea of killing in mass quantities).

It would be just like that part in the New Testament where Jesus diverts hundreds of evil spirits into a HERD OF PIGS, and then the pigs just run straight into the ocean and DROWN!

Seriously guys this is clearly a great idea. ROBOT LOCUSTS. STEERING SWARMS OF REAL LOCUSTS. It's the future.

Hamas steals aid supplies from UN building.

And in the process, most likely discourages hundreds of thousands of people worldwide from contributing money toward aid to Gaza. This is exactly the reason that the BBC was recently giving in not broadcasting information about where to send relief money: the aid will go to Hamas.

Of course, Hamas can't do that much military damage with food and blankets, but it can claim credit for them when distributing them and cut off aid to people who oppose them (the fact that the UN was giving aid to people linked to Hamas opponents was one of the reasons Hamas gave for stealing the supplies). So to the extent that Hamas can wield control over aid as a weapon over the Gazan people, this is a serious problem.

So yeah, fuck you, Hamas. Good people paid good money for that stuff, and it wasn't for you.

Anyone know of a good program to record long (30-60 minutes) bits of audio on a computer? I am trying to avoid having to use a tape recorder.

Dude. So not cool.

I've been reading up on the ideological settler movement for this paper I'm writing. The behavior described in this article is not surprising at all. And when we tried to remove them by force, they fought back Waco-style. That's how crazy this shit is. They consider the current Israeli government totally illegitimate for even trying to interfere with settlement construction, so I'm not surprised that they also don't particularly respect other people's private property rights.

These people are completely insane. Imagine if we had civilian FLDS groups trying to set up compounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, on other people's property, in order to prevent us from ever pulling our army out of there, and saying that this is what God commands them to do. Also imagine that every once in a while a one of their members in good standing up and shoots a bunch of Iraqi civilians in a mosque or assassinates an American politician, and end up hailed as heroes by their community. That's how crazy this is.

Obviously, there are also Muslims who are this crazy and violent or worse. But when the country that you're supporting as the shining light of secular democracy in the middle east has this kind of problem with its own citizens, it's just depressing.

So a while back (I can't locate the entry), I complained that I couldn't find any fair-trade clothing that didn't look like it was mostly suitable for exercise, lounging, or yoga.

But just recently I found this store, which is really pretty exciting. Haven't bought anything from it yet, since it's expensive and I don't currently need anything, but I felt like saving the link and sharing it with y'all.

Also, who wants a blue canary in the outlet by the light switch? I do. I actually already bought Mike a similar light from another store (the web page seems to be down) that had a blue canary AND a birdhouse, in stained glass. But now I've found this one, and I want it. But it's 50 freakin' bucks.

So I recently got The Czechoslovak Cookbook, which is just an English translation/adaptation of a rather popular basic cookbook in Czech Republic and Slovakia (it was probably originally published there when they were both the same country).

It's great. My mom's side of the family is Czech, and I'm happy that I can cook all sorts of things that I used to eat when I was little, either at the annual Czech Bazaars that I went to, or when visiting Prague (I used to go there with my family at least once every two years starting in 1990). Even though I didn't eat Czech food most of the time when I was little, whenever we got Czech food it was always treated like a big treat. But ever since I became vegetarian (fifteen or so years ago!), it's been hard to get traditional Czech food that I can eat even when I'm in Prague, other than pastries and some random things like fried cauliflower and fried cheese and Czech crepes. But now, I can make stuff myself, so I don't have to worry about what's got beef broth in it! It feels so good to eat this stuff, I can really get why Southerners refer to traditional Southern cooking as "soul food." It's good to eat what you grew up on.

Another interesting result: yesterday, I decided to make Czech knedliky (dumplings), but the kind that I know as real, authentic knedliky apparently included yeast. I didn't want to wait for my knedliky to rise so I picked an easier-seeming recipe that just called for some cooked farina (cream of wheat), mixed with an egg and some butter, and dunked in soup.

I ENDED UP WITH MATZO BALLS. Freakin' matzo balls! They weren't quite the same since the farina was cooked in milk and I imagine that actual matzo balls don't have dairy in them (since they usually go in chicken soup), not to mention the fact that, well, they weren't made out of matzo. But you could easily use this same recipe, I think, to make matzo balls by just using matzo and water instead of farina and milk.

Lessons learned:
1. Jewish food is really just Eastern European food, tweaked to be kosher, and
2. Cream of wheat is a pretty good replacement for matzo flour, apparently (however, not vice versa; I would NOT recommend microwaving matzo flour and water for a nice hot breakfast)

There are other recipes that I've tried from this book that people pointed out were analogous to Jewish food. I made some palačinky (Czech crepes) for Mike at some point and used cream cheese and/or jam to fill them instead of some of the more traditional Czech fillings because I had to make do with what was already in his parents' kitchen, and his parents pointed out that they were blintzes. I made some poppyseed koláč pastries (basically tarts with filling in them) and people pointed out that they were sort of like big, round hamentaschen (with a somewhat different type of crust).

This is further evidence for my theory that much of what we call "Jewish" culture in the US is really Eastern European culture. Which is how I explain why people who know I'm "half Jewish," and who hear me talk about my mother and grandmother, are constantly surprised that they're not the Jewish side (my grandmother talks about nothing but her poor health, WWII, and how nobody helps her, and complained throughout my childhood that my mother was starving me to death; my mother is a guilt expert, has exclusively Jewish friends as far as I can tell, and gets really excited when she meets a nice, single med student who's even vaguely my age- she tried to set me up with a friend of mine from pre-school once she ran into his mom and found out that he was in med school).

Now I want to drop out of law school and open a vegetarian, kosher-dairy Eastern European fusion restaurant. I would have NO COMPETITION! I would adapt the dishes to be moderately healthy! You could eat gluten goulash! Dumplings filled with textured vegetable protein, or maybe even VEGETABLES! I could sell pre-made Shabbat dinners every Friday afternoon! HIPSTERS would go there, because they would think that the concept was ironic, but it would be COMPLETELY SINCERE.

What is everyone doing tomorrow?

I've signed up for a chat about mentoring kids with disabilities. It's not really volunteering in and of itself, but it may be the start of a regular volunteering thing.

I was tempted to sign up for "knitting for the homeless" but this feels like too much fun for too little actual value added.

Any furries on my friends list want to do an interview for this online mag? My lj friend jinxremoving knows someone at this mag who wants to write a fur-related article.

Pros: judging from the articles, these people have seen pretty much everything and appear interested in being interesting but respectful and non-sensationalistic. Which appears rare among journalists who want to talk about furries.

Potential cons: the article is in the "deviance" section (but note that they're really quite pro-deviance), and this section seems to focus largely on sexuality/sexual identity issues, which may not be your bag. However, they do have random essays about other subcultural interests, like punk. So again, not too much of a concern.

Comments screened.

I'm still alive, I'm just so behind on checking livejournal that I'm avoiding even looking at my friends page. If something important has happened and I haven't checked in or responded, that's why.

I had an Evidence exam today, it was miserable - I knew all the answers but ran out of time. This is the first time my tendency to hyperfocus during stress has actually hurt me on a law school exam - this one, unlike the others I'd taken, had 50 short answer questions in addition to two essays, and I only got to about 30 of the short answers because I was taking so much time to dissect and double-check my short answers (plus, I was miscounting the amount of time I had left). I hope that enough other people had this problem that I didnt' completely bomb it; it was an admittedly long test, but I think many other people finished. Sigh.

Also, my fingers and toes on my right side have been increasingly swelling and itching for the past few weeks. This has happened every winter for the past several years and nobody's managed to diagnose it. It looked to everyone like an allergy but nobody could figure out what it was from or why it was just in the winter. I was told to moisturize my hands more because this would make it harder for allergenic particles to irritate my hands, but that's never worked and has often apparently made it worse, leading me to think I was allergic to a lot of lotions even though I couldn't figure out what in them was allergenic.

I'm now pretty sure what it is, though: I'm allergic to cold itself. I'm serious, this is a condition that exists. The fact that it's on my toes this year (it wasn't significant in previous years) indicates that it's not anything my hands are coming into contact with. And the toes got bad after I'd briefly walked barefoot on a very cold floor. And I'm not exercising just now because of exams, which explains why it's so much worse than usual, since blood vessel constriction seems to be part of the mechanism. It also explains why lotion sometimes makes it worse: the lotion itself, especially if it's been in a cold room, is often itself COLD.

Luckily, I've been knitting lately and made a delightful pair of mittens for myself, and this gives me an excuse to wear them at almost every opportunity. I should be more careful about staying warm. I don't like wearing socks and mittens even if I'm just out for a second, but it seems like a small price to pay, I guess.

So the last paragraph of my last post turned out to be the understatement of the year. Ugh. My family and I spent a large portion of Thanksgiving dinner freaking out about India, to the point that a family friend (whose house we were eating at) kept being like "so, whaddaya know, it's Thanksgiving and we're worried about people halfway across the globe! That's um... something to be thankful for! That we're not worried about people HERE? I'm so grateful. Let's talk about happy things, guys." Then my grandmother started talking about racists she lived next door to in the 1950s, and SOMEONE ELSE (amazingly, not my grandmother) talked for a bit about Nazis. We're not big on this "happiness" thing, apparently.

I'm such a law dork that I had a really great dream last night about reading, then discussing, a law review article that discussed Constitutional guarantees of privacy, liberty and property FROM A CRITICAL MENTAL DISABILITY RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE. It actually made sense, not just dream-sense! At least insofar as I can totally imagine someone writing his article. The premise appeared to be that these rights seemed so important, regardless of the fact that they were occasionally anti-utilitarian, because they distinguished the rightsholders from people who were mentally "incompetent," who tend not to be afforded these rights. The fact that people who were mentally disabled weren't just an exception to a general rule of rights-having-ness, the fact that they didn't have these rights was the entire reason the rights were seen as important in the first place (arguments of this sort are actually relatively common in critical legal theory). It was, in my dream, a badass article.

India trying to attract "spiritual tourists" looking to find peace in the face of economic insecurity. Maybe after they've gone to a temple and fed some monkeys, you could take some of these tourists who are so financially insecure (but not so financially insecure that they can't afford to go to India), and show them what real poverty looks like. Then maybe they'd have spiritual healing and some fucking perspective.

The push for more tourism may also work better if the same news site didn't also have a recent headline about people opening fire at hotels and tourist-friendly restaurants in Mumbai. Eek.

I'm watching the Ames Moot Court competition. This is an annual Big Deal where two teams of students argue a fake case before three judges, one of whom is always a Supreme Court justice (this time it's Stephen Breyer).

The arguments are now over, and the judges are right now deliberating the case. In the meantime, they're playing music to distract the audience. The setlist:

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues ("I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die")
Bob Marley - I Shot the Sheriff
Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
[song I didn't recognize]

It would be more amusing if the case this year was a criminal one, but it did involve whether people had a free speech interest in posting information on how to hack a university's web site and steal information, so I guess that does involve criminal activity somehow.