Opinion: When religion loses its credibility

What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality? I suppose, much as a newspaper maintains its credibility by setting the record straight, church leaders would need to do the same: Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not …

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for tomorrow: TEACHING ABOUT THANKSGIVING

. . . For an Indian, who is also a school teacher, Thanksgiving was never an easy holiday for me to deal with in class. I sometimes have felt like I learned too much about “the Pilgrims and the Indians.” Every year I have been faced with the professional and moral dilemma of just how …

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the “Fuck housework” poster

I don’t often promote other people’s stuff, but Noel gave me this very special poster two years ago for Christmas and some people have asked about it. Noel grew up seeing this photograph: From left to right ~ there is my sister Mimi, a photographer from southern California who my mother tried to set me …

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Yinglish

I was looking up the word “shpiel” after it came up in a conversation with Alec yesterday. By the way, Alec worked as a Shabbes goy in New York City before I met him. Both these words and more are defined here: Yinglish on Wikipedia. My mother had a copy of the book The Joys …

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Interesting word. Schadenfreude

I first heard about the word Schadenfreude on Boston Legal – one of my favorite television shows. “Schadenfreude” is the title of a Boston Legal episode wherein character Alan Shore (James Spader) uses the term in explaining why some defendants are convicted of an unrelated crime after having engaged in culturally unacceptable or possibly illegal …

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two of my favorite quotes

“Listen, stories move in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And …

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