It's like having my own personal think tank.

[hermionesviolin]

I have really solid, quality people in my life. I appreciate that a lot. So yeah, big general thank you to y'all.

Am still tweaking next semester's class schedule (registration is in a couple weeks) and have now started thinking about next year also.

More abuse of the friendslist will follow.

Reminding you that op/ed pieces must be sent to Cate by Wednesday at 6pm.

These are the topics that we would like addressed this week:
1. Copyright and file sharing
2. the HONS issue
3. the saving-Energy contest

Let me know if you are interested in contributing on those topics or any others.

[Whoa, that e-mail was sent to 14 people. 5 editorials appear in an issue. 3 of us have a weekly column. Wow, that's a lot of "when I feel like it" writers.]

I don't feel capable of writing on any of those topics. So someone tell me what to write about.

As soon as the partial-birth abortion ban passed and everyone freaked out i thought about writing an article on that. It's such a tricky issue that i'm still working out what exactly i think, so i'm not sure i could manage a coherent piece on it.

When i finally update there will be stuff about the Buddhist talks i went to yesterday. One of the things which came up (though unfortunately it felt mostly like lip service) was being compassionate, not being antagonistic towards one's opponents; deep listening, trying to understand where one's opponents are coming from. Can that somehow be worked into a piece that isn't horribly vague and preachy?

I didn't watch the Democratic Debate tonight, so unless there's a transcript around i can't write on that. (The friends-of list will be abused again once i finally have time to start investigating candidates.)

Hmm. Logic 100 every year has its students break into 4 groups and chalk the campus arguing about some controversial issue which is actually fake but is presented as real. It didn't work so well this year because it was over Family Weekend and the rain meant flyers in the Campus Center instead of chalkings all over campus, but the issue this year was Smith establishing a Military Science department. I feel like somehow one could make an article out of that, but whatever vague plan i had seems to have fallen out of my brain.

There are those blinking studies i was talking about with akronohten the other night. The problematics of searching for and/or finding a "gay gene" or something similar. That could be a cool article. And it would just be an opinion editorial about an issue which has been in the news and happens to be relevant to Smithies but it gets me out of the all-about-Smith groove i've been in (Celebration, Grecourt Gates, political diversity at Smith). I feel like not only have i been in a Smith groove but it's been a complaining about Smith groove and even if no one else notices i feel like that's bad (not that there isn't plenty to criticize, i just think it's bad to do only that every week) so it would be nice to have a breather from that.

Or maybe i could just write a piece on SCMA's Undomesticated Interiors (which i heart muchly). Though that's really an arts piece, and i would want to wait until the companion exhibit "Photographing Undomesticated Interiors" went up (that starts this Friday). And i really have no idea how i would go about doing a piece on that, i just lurve the exhibit so it popped into my head.


[One of the many reasons i heart LJ is that writing things down helps me clarify them and apparently gets me thinking. I'm now thinking blinking studies as my piece, which totally wasn't on my possible list when i started this entry. And i may Letter to the Editor if the inevitable abortion piece makes me want to defenestrate desk chairs.]

Comments

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yes, saying that an argument about genetics and sexuality is too familiar and has already been argued seems somewhat ironic coming on the heels of a request to write about copyright and file sharing, which i personally feel has been done to death. I have no interest in any of her 3 suggestions and find the HONS one particularly odd as i have heard nothing about it in probably a month (though the banner is still up in front of Sessions) and since most all of it was hearsay on the Jolt (though i do actually have a friend in Sessions) i feel distinctly unqualified to write about it.

Soon after the bill passed and i began to feel the campus reaction and read a bit about it myself i thought of it as a possible editorial topic and have in fact mentioned it to Cate in my most recent e-mail to her. I suspect a raging liberal will have already claimed it and i will cringe and write a Letter to the Editor, but we shall see.

I think i would produce the best piece on the sexuality issue as well. Shame the lady in charge doesn't see it that way. I may do an LJ on it anyway since sk8eeyore said "I'd love to read such a piece by you." In a lot of ways it feels to me like rehashing old stuff, but there is new science (particularly if i'm including the gender identity study) and one thing i really like about writing in LJ about all this interesting stuff i read is that it helps me understand what is being said and figure out and articulate just what i think about it (ironic given part of our comments on my other entry, huh?).