Feministblogs.org is an aggregate of weblogs about feminist and politics from a feminist perspective. Check it out! So far, the contributors (not including myself) are:

• BlackFeminism.org
• Rad Geek
• Mouse Words
• Rox Populi
• Sappho's Breathing
• Sheelzebub
• Trish Wilson
• Wicked Muse
• feministe

Here's how to get your feed in there. I forgot to tell Rad Geek, who started this project, that he could just use my category-specific feeds for feminism and politics, but I can do that now, I guess. :)

Anyone interested in feminist theory, particularly as it applies to technology, ought to peruse the gender_cyber_archive, unless you already have and I'm the last to find out about it. In the archive are written essays and audio lectures in .ram format. I'm especially interested in these:

• Joan W. Scott, Fictitious Unities: «Gender,» «East,» and «West»
• Donna J. Haraway, Alpha Bitches Online: the Dog Genome for the Next Genderation
• Anne Phillips, Feminist Politics: Facing the Future
• Susan Stanford Friedman, Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies, and Geopolitical Literacy
• Angela Thomas and Valerie Walkerdine, Girls and Computer Games
• Maria Pini, Girls on Film: Video Diaries as 'Auto-Ethnographies'

Cross-posted to Kairosnews.

After the election and the emotionally-charged reactions to it, Michelle and Cindy have started afresh, deleting their old blogs and starting new ones. I don't quite understand the motivations, mostly because they've done it for personal reasons I can't possibly know. While I'm dismayed to lose the old posts, I respect their decision, and they don't owe anyone an explanation. I'm more concerned about the likelihood that some will stop blogging completely, like Rana, who has announced that she's going on hiatus indefinitely, and now Jeanne, who is thinking about taking Body and Soul down.

I know it's awfully melodramatic, but images of self-immolation on a pyre of virtual burning books keep coming to my mind. I might as well say it -- suttee -- because I can't pretend not to notice that these are all bright, eloquent women. It should be obvious that I have nothing but respect for all of the bloggers I've mentioned, I certainly understand the desire to retreat and reflect for a while, and I'll support any decisions they make about their blogs, but it's precisely because I hold them in such high regard that I must object to the decision to stop blogging (in the case of Rana and Jeanne, that is).

NB to Cindy, Michelle, Jeanne, and Rana: Please correct me if I've misrepresented your motivations. People have assigned motives to me before that hadn't even occurred to me, and I don't want to do it to anyone else. I sincerely apologize in advance if I have.

Fairly soon, we're going to be discussing informal fallacies in my first-year composition class. We've touched upon them already, but I want to set aside a day just for talking about them. I'm toying with the idea of adding a list of mostly tacit debate commonplaces to supplement our study of fallacies of ethos, pathos, and logos. Here are the ones I have so far; they have already come up in class obliquely, but it doesn't hurt to spell them out:

1. The first person to get mad loses the debate. (Inspired by one of the Tutor's comments here.)
2. Anecdotes about "my black friends," "my gay friends," etc. don't hold up as evidence to support your points. (Inspired by one of Harrison's comments here in response to this post.)
3. Comparing those who disagree with you to Hitler or the Nazis really hurts your ethos. (Inspired by countless arguments on various message boards.)

Got any to add? Ought I to chuck the idea altogether? I'm not particularly attached to it and am open to suggestions.

NCA is going on right now. Is anyone blogging it?

Lately I've been checking out those Standard Deviants DVDs from the public library, particularly the ones on physics and chemistry. I figured it was time for a review of scientific notation, scalars, vectors, one- and two-dimensional kinematics, Newton's laws of motion, etc. The viewing is motivated by my desire to use metaphorically terms like "covalent bonds" in casual conversation to impress my friends and my paranoid fantasy that one day I just might find myself in an imperiled spacecraft and need to know this stuff. Yeah, you can say it! I'm an "odd bird." I've heard it hundreds of times before.

There aren't many annoying situations that can't be assuaged by listening to music. Yesterday I was standing in a long line at the post office -- which normally causes me to seethe in my cauldron of impatience -- and I had my CD player, headphones, and Emmylou Harris' Anthology playing. I decided right then and there to make it a point to take my CD player, headphones, and several CDs everywhere I go. Today's soundtrack is Pizzicato Five's Happy End of the World, which you should all check out from your libraries immediately.

Go see Cindy at her new place!

YOU ARE CHAMOMILE


What herb are you?
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Via Michelle.

A news story for which I was interviewed came out today. If you'd like to read it and aren't registered at philly.com, you're welcome to use my login info. Email: abstractgroove at lycos dot com, password: ararat2

I'm only quoted a couple of times, short quotes at that, and a little oversimplified, but it's to be expected. Oh well.