The flickr gnomes pulled three pictures from the Commons and put them up on my dashboard there: Two Women Boxing (love the hats!): I’m sure this is faked, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy: Color photo of a real Rosie the Riveter type from WWII:

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That’s a rhetorical question by the way, so quiet, you. Zip it! The following makes a good drinking game: one swallow from a goblet of consecrated wine whenever you hear (or think you hear) about the Pope, a shot of bad gin for each time one of the Henry VIII’s wives is mentioned (you’ll have [...]

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Driving past the high school today, I saw a number of costumed people. Even at the law school, there are plenty of people dressed up. Halloween is the day that this society acknowledges that mask. We all wear different masks throughout the day, throughout the year (the corporate yes-person, the dutiful child, the loving spouse). [...]

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Religious majorities are not allowing minorities to be buried in their graveyards. Fine on the outside, until one realizes that there is often only one (religious) graveyard serving a community.

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All the news (and blogosphere) seems able to talk about today is the fact that the official number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since we went back to war there has reached 4000. There was not one (un)lucky person who tips the scales to a nice, round, reportable number, but 4. And this morning, [...]

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Detail from the Scroll of Hungry Ghosts showing ghosts devouring corpses in a graveyard. Click to see the full image. A few years back, I took a graduate course called “Japanese Ghosts.” It was a fascinating blend of cultural, folklore, literary, feminist, political and religious studies. One article argued against the common assumption among academics [...]

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