These opening ceremonies are pretty damn cool, on multiple levels. More on that later.

bravecows has a brief quotation from the dancer Lee Su-Feh that gets right to the crux of what's wrong with cultural appropriation. One word summary: context. (But read the whole interview!)

The New York Times interviews Jenny Sanford, who will soon not be Jenny Sanford anymore. I thought her story, as told by her, was really interesting. Hard not to compare her with Elizabeth Edwards, at least for me.

Barbie's next career is a computer engineer. As someone who stopped playing with Barbies at age six due to her convictions that Barbie was bad for women, I support this career move wholeheartedly.

houbanaut has a post in scans_daily about the French comic Adèle and the movie Luc Besson just made of it. Looks pretty cool.

kaigou has an interesting post on writing, and on filing off serial numbers in same.

yhlee wrote me a poem, "Crow Arithmetic", for help_haiti. ♥!

rachel_manija's poem "Nine Views of the Oracle" is nominated for a Rhysling Award, and is excellent.