Negative Gain Round-Up

I actually have made negative progress on my finals this week. The four pages I've written are washed out by the five page paper I only just today was informed/remembered I had. Net: negative one page. Speaking of finals and failing, I also played in the IM floor hockey championship game today. I had two goals, but we lost 5-3. Still, it was an excellent season (we had to win a razorthin 2-1 upset to even make the finals), and we'll be back next term.

So instead of real posts, you get a round-up:

The NYT has a cool story about adopted Chinese orphans getting their Bat Mitzvot. I like anything that binds Judaism into multiculturalism--we're not all (or even mostly) White, y'know (for example, That Black Lesbian Jew)!

A BBC Poll is out, measuring various countries' assessments of whether other countries are mostly positive or negative influences on the world. Israel beats Iran for last place, both as an average and in terms of most countries ranking it last. Israel had net positives only from the US, India, Kenya, and Nigeria. Incidentally, Germany's split on Israel was 10% positive, 77% negative--only Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon had lower net negatives for the Jewish state.

Belle Waring has a stellar post on female sexuality from a feminist lens.

A post by Jill at Feministe explores her personal experience being targeted on law school posting forums. Some pretty sleazy stuff happens on those threads. Dave Hoffman makes an interesting contribution to the discussion.

Peggy McGuinness blogs on the State Department's release of the 2006 Human Rights report. It's a bit tough to condemn Egypt for torture when we're sending our terror suspects over to Cairo so they can be tortured on our behalf.

Ezra Klein excerpts from an intriguing interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee (AR).

Watch the surge work!

The Washington Post has a series of stories up on the Darfur situation. They aren't good news. The refugee camp situation along the Chadian border is worsening, and gunmen have kidnapped and killed two peacekeepers. Meanwhile, Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir wrote Bush a letter, and Bush apparently wrote back (no judgment on my part without knowing the content of his response).

A Southern blogger not-so-gently corrects Newt Gingrich for blaming the victims of Katrina.