I am a bad blogger

It's now been since last Wednesday that I've done a real bloggage. What's my problem? I'm not sure. Let me tell you, though; I have a lot of words ready to go, so if you're easily bored with collegiate discussion, skip to the links section. When last I checked in, I was recounting my dilemma of law school. I've since begun to document the advice/preferences of the various people who have weighed in on my dilemma.

Mom: No Stated Preference (she says if I make my decision based solely on money and prestige, that I will make the wrong one. She says it's not morally right. As I told her, it's a tough enough decision to make without having to think about morals.)
Dad: Hamline, but bets hedged due to…
Sherri: She discussed my problem with the TU (Tulsa U) Law Dean, who says go to U of M.
Mag: U of M
Haygruh: U of M
Aleava: U of M
Jeron: Hamline
Lia: U of M, after negotiation (nice suggestion. I'll give it a shot)
Other suggestions?

While I'm in the collegiate choice business, my sister Valerie is a high school junior and is in the pre-college stage of stuff. Her standardized scores are good, and she currently lives in the backwoods of North Carolina. Her stated leaning is to go to another school in the backwoods of North Carolina, Mars Hill. I am not enthused about this choice. I believe strongly that college should be a time of independence; forced if need be. Remove oneself from the environment that you are raised in and prove that you can survive and flourish in a different environment. My mom thinks she's made a major concession in not allowing Val to go to the school where mom teaches, but Mars Hill is only an hour away, and popped out of the same cookie cutter (ie, small, Baptist, in the Piedmont, probably not a diverse student body). Besides, I think you can learn a lot about the school from the student newspaper. This is an example of what I find there, a badly edited screed about how there is too much Britney Spears music (and Christian Pop) being played on the campus radio station. Well, besides the reporting of sorority events. VAL: WAKE UP! Go to a bigger or more cosmopolitan school! Valerie has more of an online social life than I do. Recently she started her own community site, which is called the LNPC, for the Late Night Psycho Clan. These are people that have spun off of another site called the Fan Forum. When I originally went through these sites, I couldn't believe how little posting of substance there is in sites like this.

Then I got off my high horse. It's true; these boards are not exactly the height of intellectual banter, but the community-within-a-community that I have been most involved with, the 1142 group, doesn't usually post much of substance either, at least that an outsider would understand it. So, I'll just chalk most of what goes on to shared experience and give up trying to figure out what's going on.

(end geekiness)

This is newsworthy? In Woodbury (TC suburb to the East), a student was not allowed to wear a shirt that says "Straight Pride." Today, the Reverend (sic) Fred Phelps showed up to protest the school's decision. You may remember Fred Phelps, he's the teacher of the gospel of love behind the Godhatesfags.com site. The student in question has disavowed the protest, and all of five people showed up. Fifteen counterprotesters did, for a grand total of twenty protestors on both sides. Please. I bet the media outnumbered both. Tangentially, did you know that in Bellingham, Washington, the prom king this year is a woman? Yep, the lesbian prom king. There's a SNL skit in there somewhere. By the way, Jeff's wife Kari wrote the article.

Hey, guess what, Buddhist friends? The Dalai Lama is in town. Although the leader of a cult, the Dalai Lama is generally well respected. I took a class on Buddhism during college. In looking around the class for the first session, it was chock full of hippies, stoners, and generally what might be referred to as Mooks. For the first assignment, the professor asked why it was that we wanted to learn about buddhism. For my essay, I wrote that I was interested in learning about a non-patriarchal tradition that was respectful of women, tolerant of others, and mindful of the environment. I was disappointed to learn that Buddhism springs from a deeply patriarchal structure as well; heirarchical in the extreme, to the point where women are thought to be inferior incarnations of their past forms, like animals. In fact, the best that most women can expect in Buddhism is to be reincarnated as a man next time so that one could find enlightenment. By the way, a comment from my essay was singled out by my prof as a reason why the course was so popular: "It's a Beastie Boys thing." Although written tongue in cheek, it's true...

Before I get the flames, I acknowledge that there has been a move to reform Buddhism into a more egalitarian view and the Dalai Lama is one of those attempting to reform it - but it just goes to show that just about all organized religion bankrupts itself somewhere along the line. I point this out mainly because it's bizarre that those liberals within the blogging world have no problem linking anti-religion sites like the Church of Reality right next to their pro-Buddhist sites. At least be consistent…

Finally, this link was on Metafilter and I don't usually link good sites from there; you can look and find them yourself. BUT. This is so freaking cool I can't even express it: a collection of color photographs from Tsarist Russia, that is, pre-revolution. These photos are unreal. And I thought my great-great-grandparents lived in a black and white world. Wow. WOW. Check out the Emir of Bukhara. Incredible.