Daily Archives: December 23, 2008

Virginia Tech Posts Killer’s Emails?

Okay, I know he’s a cold-blooded killer, but really? Releasing private emails between the Virigina Tech gunman and his professors? Is that ethical? Legal? Apparently yes to the latter.

The unauthorized release of thousands of documents related to the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre has given new voice to killer Seung Hui Cho, who e-mailed regularly with professors in the years prior to the shootings and whom they reached out to repeatedly as it became clearer that he was a deeply troubled, even obsessive, young man.

Liz Spikol on glasses

z41I came across this post by Liz Spikol of PW fame. As an avid fan of Philly columnist Spikol , I was disappointed the post had already closed for comments. It spoke of the rumor that Sarah Palin wore fake glasses.

Liz writes: I take this accusation quite seriously. As a woman who wears real glasses, I can tell you it takes energy and determination to live life with glass/plastic essentially glued to one’s face almost 18 hours a day. Faking it? That happens very rarely. To go to Anthropologie, buy a cute pair to match with your outfit, and wear them for a day? Fun! But to go through life with the same pair, day in and day out, clear glass? No way.

I was surprised nobody mentioned the fact that Indian/Pakistani/Desi parents make their female offspring wear glasses all the time to prevent the evil eye (read horny boys) from crossing their darlings’ beautiful faces. My mom often spoke of her classmates, whose beauty inspired their parents to fit them with psudeo-glasses that kept men on the street from harassing them. In fact, when I first got contacts, my parents were horrified and tried desperately to make me cover up my face. Apparently, they believed like Dorothy Parker that “Men don’t make passes at girls that wear glasses.”

Sorry Ms. Parker, try again.


Just playin

gunsYou must’ve have heard the news that five Philadelphia-area Muslim men were just convicted of conspiring to massacre soldiers at Fort Dix. AP reports “Convicted were: Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business. A sixth man arrested and charged only with gun offenses pleaded guilty earlier.”

According to folks defending the men, they were just playin.’ If the information from the trial is correct, however the men were indeed plotting something nefarious and the folks defending them are blind apologists. Continue reading

Brothers 2008

z33uddin1PZAL03P-AAs 2008 comes to an end, I can’t help but be haunted by three young men whose deaths have impacted my life this year. These three men died terrible deaths in 2008.  One, a young immigrant boy, reminds me of my own immigrant family.  The ever-present quest for the American dream. The other, a soon-to-be teacher brings to mind my post-undergrad years. The fears, hopes and doubts of that time in life. And the last, a boy struggling with severe depression, whose  story seems so familiar, I look away every time I see his picture.  Continue reading

If you like to run…

z15Think about becoming a Students Run Philly Style mentor to a student from a local Philadelphia school. In the past students have competed in the Philadelphia Marathon as well as the Broad Street Run. I received this email from them:

Continue reading