I’m pleased to share the publication of a new chapter of an edited volume. The chapter in question is “I’m a French teacher, not a data scientist”: Culture and languages across my professions, and it’s part of a volume called Cultures and languages across the curriculum in higher education. According to the CLAC Consortium, Culture and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) is a: a curricular framework that provides opportunities to develop and apply language and intercultural competence within all academic disciplines through the use of multilingual resources and the inclusion of multiple cultural perspectives.

Yesterday, I wrote a post on Jephthah, a figure in the book of Judges who makes a commitment that if God helps him out in battle, he’ll sacrifice the first thing that exits the door of his house when he returns home. Robert Alter notes that there’s been a lot of rabbinic and scholarly effort to make sense of this but that in “any case, it is a rash vow.” Indeed, the vow goes wrong, and Jephthah winds up in a situation where’s he believes he’s committed to offer up his daughter in sacrifice.

Some of the most troubling passages in the Christian canon have to do with the sacrifice of children in the name of God. Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is perhaps the most obvious example of this, but there are other examples that (ought to) raise as much concern in the mind of the believer. Perhaps the most interesting (to me) story along these lines is found in Judges 11:31 (I’m using Robert Alter’s fantastic translation throughout this post), where one of the eponymous judges, a man by the name of Jephthah:

Lots to love in this article, but I especially appreciate the point that God and Creation resist binaries.

Ashamed to say I hadn’t ever thought about this possibility.

What a story. I knew how awful the TSA could be to passengers, but I never knew how bad it also was for its own employees.

Learned about the Trib article from this blog post, which I think also makes some solid points. It’s one thing to prefer that outside organizations not provide materials, but if BYU isn’t doing anything itself…

What a disappointment.

One of my favorite podcasts, The Incomparable, recently covered this book, describing it as a crazy mix of genres and ideas that shouldn’t work but absolutely does. That convinced me to give the book a try, and that description holds up. There’s a woman who’s sold her soul to a demon; a family of extraterrestrial refugees running a donut shop; a trans girl escaping from abuse; love for video game music; a deep respect for food, classical music, and violin construction; and so much that doesn’t seem to all fit in the same story but does anyway.

Worrying days ahead. There’s a lot being said on Gab that’s spilling out into “mainstream” GOP discourse.

I’m glad the article identifies Art as an apostle for Community of Christ, to emphasize that it’s entirely possible to be affirming and Christian. Coming from Mormonism, I’m not used to the idea of apostles standing up for queer causes, so as gross as the book removal is, I’m grateful for Art’s example here.

Given the aggressively queerphobic language I’ve read on Gab, events like this are worrying but not surprising. More worrying is the way that this queerphobic language is increasingly used in the mainstream GOP. How do Republican politicians and voters feel about these events?

Thanks to a recommendation from BoingBoing, I just finished reading a Business Insider article describing a recent video in which Marjorie Taylor Greene: predicted that identifying as heterosexual will be a thing of the past within a period of less than 200 years thanks to LGBTQ-inclusive sex educators, who she called “trans terrorists.” More specifically, Greene was quoted as saying that heterosexual extinction would come about “probably in about four or five generations.

Tom the Dancing Bug is usually just the right level of dark.

Love this.

Seems to me that folks truly concerned about the integrity of women’s sports would have more to say about this.

This matches rhetoric I’m reading while doing research on Gab. We need respectable conservative movements in the U.S., but our contemporary mainstream right is flirting with these ideas instead of denouncing them. It’s troubling

Worries about this picking up. General Assembly took steps in a bad direction this session, but they could go further next time.

I have spent a few hours this week reading violently anti-trans posts as part of a research project. My patience for queerphobic dog whistles disguised as feigned concerns about girls’ sports is at zero. So disappointed in the Kentucky legislature.

I bike past this house and its flags every day; seeing them is always a boost. How upsetting that people would want to burn one.

Greene is repeatedly awful, and the GOP’s refusal to do anything substantial about it is telling.

Shut up and take my money! This is why itch is one of my favorite game-related places on the internet.

Kentucky has taken some bad steps in this direction lately, but this is horrific.

Disappointed to see more legislation like this under consideration.

Just explained something I learned from studying far right spaces in Mormon social media to collaborators on a project studying queer spaces in far right social media, which is not an experience I expected when starting grad school in ed tech.

Good news for Lexington! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

This is frustrating and sad.