So my alumni account turned on this morning. But I learned my lessons:

1. Zoho has a much better email interface than Google, and a better privacy policy.
2. I am going to buy a domain to use exclusively for this purpose so it's in my control, not someone else's....

GWU cancelled an email address forwarding service they had advertised as a permanent alumni benefit. I used my @alumni.gwu.edu email address as my permanent address. I changed where it forwarded at least 4 times, but whenever I wanted to be known on the internet, I was [redacted]@alumni.gwu.edu ( Read more... )

He's doing awesome ( Read more... )

We put the kid down at 6:30pm tonight (whoa!) and he slept until about 12am (whoa!!). I was able to get him back to bed by 1. I'm realizing that I am proud of that, but I wonder if this is something to be anecdotally proud of or if there are decent metrics I can use to analyze my effectiveness at sleeping him. I'm thinking something like these ( Read more... )

I learned about the most amazing thing this past week - The Kowloon Walled City (KWC), the most densely-populated place on earth (35-50,000 people in 6.5 acres) until its destruction in 1993, and the only example I know of a large, modern truly state-less society.


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I was looking on the Yad Vashem website and found records of my distant cousins who were killed in the Holocaust... These are my paternal grandfather's mother's neices and nephews. Most of them are posted by this one woman who's a cousin of theirs on the other side. She's not at all related to me, went to Israel, and is probably no longer alive, ( Read more... )

After reading this article in the Washington Post, I'm left with the impression that there's a distinction between "Islamic fundamentalism-linked terrorism" and "right-wing terrorism ( Read more... )

So my main concern with Rush Limbaugh's horribly offensive statements that hasn't been addressed by the media is the factual inaccuracy. He's claiming that somehow taxpayers are paying for people's healthcare insurance which includes birth control. That's just factually wrong. Not even the Georgetown is fully paying for the insurance - they're ( Read more... )

Spent some of the weekend singing "Kan Guo Lai (Look Over Here)", a cheesy Chinese pop song that maybe only foreigners like. I found a version with pinyin and Hebrew and I thought it was hilarious that it exists, so here it is:

Click to view

I'm rereading the Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.

The short stories, written in the late 40s and early 50s are based in the "future" of 1999-2026. Most of the plot happens in 2005 or earlier.

I think this book is a fascinating glimpse into 1940s American life. Like all Bradbury, it starts with the assumption that America (and therefore ( Read more... )