What Would Phoebe Do?

-What does one do with partially-soaked chickpeas? I went a bit crazy (like, 30 cents worth of crazy) at the bulk section of Whole Foods, an...

" i love garlic and can make a mean mashed potato w/ roasted garlic. however, as i've gotten older i began to have tons of stomach ...

Somehow, the post I wrote about Jews paired off with non-Jews who are also not real-Americans turned into a discussion of Jewish men and As...

-Worst fashion suggestion yet: Advising regular women to dress like models do on their time off. Bad advice why? Models are women a) who, i...

- Celebrate the pale, delicate-featured, nine-foot-tall, emaciated model with one tiny, barely-visible bit of non-white heritage. Sure, she...

In Jewish discussions of intermarriage, interfaith dating, and the like, the non-Jewish partner is implicitly assumed to have one of two ide...

On Friday, one thing led to another and I ended up scoring a pair of APC jeans (see attempt at photograph above) for $5, or $150 less than w...

Is nothing sacred?

I'm not sure if I'm ABD now, or if this status only comes after defending the dissertation proposal, but in any case I've been a...

The man who wrote the book letting Americans known that Europe has a Muslim problem is now telling Americans about Belgium's Walloon pro...

Fellow teachers, What do you do if, ten minutes past the time a (non-standardized) test ought to end, you still have students who won't ...

Just went on my first post-exam run. It turns out that preparing for qualifying exams can in fact reverse years' worth of on-and-off run...

For a vaguely NSFW and, frankly, odd discussion of the alleged rise of the sultry Jewess, see here , here , and here . What would be absolu...

It was only a matter of time. (Yes, this is about online shoe-shopping.) Why did it take so long? For starters, living in a walk-up, I was n...

On the one hand, I'm not at all surprised to learn that the place Jo and I had been going once a week for croissants - the place with th...

The desire on the part of some educators to include 'roughing it' and 'character building' in curricula is as old as time. O...

For a while now, I've had an idea for a new feature on this blog, in which once a week (or a day, a month...) I'll attempt to answer...

This week, I've experienced grad school at its most and least stressful. Most, the moments I had to stand outside the room during my exa...

Eugene Robinson doesn't seem too worried about Tiger Woods' affairs. His main concern is that Woods goes for the "Barbie" ...

MSI is to Hannah Arendt what I am to Theodor Herzl. Sort of. In the sense that Herzl (pre- and post-conversion to Zionism) has a tendency t...

This week's NYT Mag cover story was shocking, shocking! Apparently, sometimes intermarriages between Jews and Gentiles involve no ...

Paul Gowder asks : "What is 'trying too hard'"? I answered, "Trying too hard, in any context, is when the effort is v...

Allow me to summarize : Jews, power, meritocracy, intermarriage is at 47% but "the daughters of political families do seem, possibly, m...

-What to make of acronyms from non-English-speaking countries that, while derived from English words, spell something ridiculous in English?...

I took a teensy study break to post home decor tips at Cheapness Studies.

I thought I'd located the ultimate first-world problem , but no, here it is: having a first name that starts with the letter "A...

It's not slow-food . It's slow-everything . I'm suspicious every time anyone asks us, as a society, to slow down. It is my suspi...

Focus on what matters: - Health : Obesity-related illness is not a myth. Exercise is unlikely to be the key to fixing this, so public-health...

The debate on Jewish particularism in these comments .

- Jews and whiteness : Rather than just asking, are Jews white, we should also ask if this is really the question that tells you most about ...

Dear fellow residents of my building, Yes, I'm the one who lives on the third floor, and yet insists on taking the elevator, thus substa...

Yay! What felt like a bad cold on Tuesday, then definitively swinish (fevers, aches, the whole deal) by Thursday morning, has disappeared in...

Of course, the day of my teaching observation would coincide with Day 2 of an achy cold. But! Right after class, who should I see on the str...

So what to make of this: When I was a young man of twenty-five or so, I was once marooned for eight days on one of society's most arid i...

... and not lobsters . My unquestioning faith in the NYT is hereby restored .

Did you know: -that a grading marathon is actually much easier to focus on if combined with singing aloud to Israeli rock music? (Yes, I am ...

A good deal of my studying at the moment appears to be about reaching the level of a French high school student. I may know more than most a...

It is popular these days to compare the status of Jews Then to that of other minorities - particularly Muslims. Now, I tend to be skeptical ...

After a rough few days of reading as fast and carefully as I can, of putting a massive mess of papers in my apartment into working order, an...

"His prose is so dense that some scholars have said it could be interpreted to mean anything, while others have dismissed it altogether...