Reading the tweets posted at #NEM gives me the sense that this is one of the good marches, at the very least re-charging the sense of community for the whole of the LGB and T. I hope so, anyway. I would have loved to hear Julian Bond, at the very least. If you don’t know who he is or what he does, check out this Queery post from back in March.
The Problem with Facebook
I meet a lot of lovely people as a result of writing two books, and I meet them via email, online, on social networking sites.
Recently on FB, I decided to restrict who I friended to people I’d met, people who I knew pretty well, people I’d worked with, went to school with, taught… you get the idea.
Some people have been upset that I de-friended them, & I’m very sorry they are.
Mostly I was tyring to protect my friend & family who often got friend requests from total strangers who “collect” friend on FB – usually for the sake of marketing something. Then someone told me about this ACLU quiz about FB’s Privacy Policy – or lack thereof – which everyone who uses FB should take.
I did make a point of asking people to move to my more public page on FB so that I could cut down on the spam, but left messaging available to anyone & everyone.
Honestly, I was about *this close* to eliminating my personal page altogether but decided to try out this compromise first. Sadly, I offended people who I didn’t mean to offend even for a second.
Apologies: navigating private & public is no easy task and surely requires someone far more graceful than me.
Happy Birthday Mara!
A very happy birthday to Mara Keisling of NCTE!
To thank her for all her hard work, make a donation for her birthday.
What a Way To Go
Rep. Carolyn Maloney will be sad, as will the rest of his family, but wow: if you’re going to go, Cliff Maloney did it right.
Elephants!
Yesterday was Elephant Appreciation Day & I missed it. I love elephants.
(You can see more at the HuffPo post about it.)
Wonky RSS?
I’m getting reports that my RSS feed has gone wonky again, except that it’s not wonky everywhere. So I’m wondering for those of you who are having problems, what your feed reader is. So far, this seems like it’s a Google RSS Reader problem.
Debt Calculator
If you’re trying to come up with a plan to pay off debt, I found this handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet, that’s downloadable.
First Day of Classes
Tomorrow is the first day of classes here at Lawrence, and I’m teaching Gender Studies 100. We’re starting with a discussion of Caster Semenya, of course, so that we can talk a little bit about the way gender studies people view a story like hers. It introduces stuff like the binary, genetic/chromosomal sexing, gender stereotypes, etc.
I’m looking forward to it. This course is co-taught, and my co-teacher is from Physics this year, which means plenty of science students. Should be entertaining.
Boards are Back
Due to my dear partner’s genius & hard work.
Open Thread!
Ah, the first of its kind, because the database for the MHB forums is acting up. Feel free to post here instead.