alexist

Why, oh why, do I keep waking up at 3am, unable to go back to sleep?

And why do i have this recurring problem with my right eyelid? It's all swollen. Again. It will go away on its own but I have no idea why it keeps happening.

My letter's in today's Indy :-)

We're going away this weekend (Friday afternoon till Sunday) for Neil's sister's birthday and leaving the cat alone. I forgot to book the cattery, then we thought about it and realised that we'd have to rush to pick her up Monday, and really, it's less than 2 days and she should be fine. But this is the longest she'll ever have been left on her own without someone to check up on her!

I bet she'll sulk at us when we come back....

After being unable to sleep, I was forcibly prevented from doing so by the sound of a jackhammer (pneumatic drill?) only metres from my bedroom window.

Ironically, yesterday Neil said "I can't believe you slept through that drilling" and I replied "what drilling?" If I'm already asleep, nothing can wake me up, but if I'm half asleep or trying to get back to sleep, forget it...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/713716.html

So now we're imposing a litmus test? Agree with us, or we'll boycott you?

*shakes head*

(BTW, I wonder if a voluntary boycott would survive legal challenge either. It would still be discrimination against Israeli researchers and academics based on their nationality.)

From today's Education Guardian:

Clara Connolly from Women Against Fundamentalisms, which calls for the phasing out of subsidies to existing religious schools and the withdrawal of the right to establish such schools, says: "The main problem with faith schools is that their primary purpose is to socialise women into their major roles of wives and mothers. All the most conservative faiths - Islamic, Catholic, Jewish, evangelical - agree that women have a place in the family and that women should be educated towards that aim."

Has this woman ever visited a faith school?! Yes, part of the Jewish tradition is that women have to be educated towards being wives and mothers, but that isn't antithetical to a good education. Ironically, at the most conservative Jewish schools, girls get a better secular education than the boys! (Secular education is considered to be a waste of time that takes away from studying religion. Since girls don't have the same obligation to study, and often support their husbands for the first few years of marriage, they get a better secular education.)

In the Orthodox Jewish context I'm pretty feminist and I don't agree with a lot of the more conservative elements, but honestly, some aggressively secular people can come out with things that are just as nonsensical.

... when someone posts an announcement that they're leaving a site and want their account deleted? It seems so melodramatic, and you're always left wondering "What happened?"

(nope, not someone on LJ, totally unrelated site.)

Today's Guardian letters, from Chris Davies, the sacked Lib Dem MEP:
"Concern about Palestine has claimed another Liberal Democrat scalp (Lib Dem leader in Europe resigns following anti-Israel remark, May 5). Jenny Tonge lost her position a year or two ago for understanding the despair that motivates suicide bombers. Now my incautious words have cost me my job. The first lesson to be learned is simple: do not send emails when blind fury has overtaken anger.

The second is harder. Do not visit Palestine. Do not see the destruction of any hope of creating a viable independent state. Do not recognise the racist apartheid policies of the Israeli government. Do not despair at the fact that Britain and the EU allows Israel to break international law with impunity yet imposes collective punishment on Palestinans for having voted the "wrong" way."

Oh please. Do stop being a martyr. There are plenty of pro-Palestinian MPs; Jenny Tonge got her sacking not from "understanding" but for saying she'd become one if she were Palestinian.

And YOU got sacked not for pitying the poor Palestinians, but for unconscionable rudeness:
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=3403

I won't even get into the apartheid comparisons, which make for a nice headline but don't reflect a far more complex reality.

By the way, while I'm undecided on the correct policy to take towards Hamas and the PA, I've yet to see an answer to the question of why Palestinians shouldn't have to accept the consequences of voting for a bunch of terrorists. (Yes, not all of them did, but I'm speaking theoretically. The papers here have acted as if "democracy" trumps all else and that you don't have to consider the consequences of your actions. Fact is, we do.)