three parts:

1. brooklyn life: i am saddened to hear of two gay bashing incidents in prospect heights in june around the vicinity of pride weekend via the community board. one guy got sent to the doctor after getting assaulted on the train and another guy deftly avoided a physical confrontation after having some Words. i am pleased, though, to hear that folks in our neighborhood are retaliating, erm, countering this dynamic by having a gay night out at a local bar. i hope nobody gets sent to the hospital on the way home, though. apparently our community has enough bigots to stage THIS right on eastern parkway, for shame. hopefully it won't have a big turnout. unless there are free reggae shows.

2. joburg life: we have no hot water in our building, and i have no xfiles dvds (have been streaming things off of youku, which is such bad quality and so slow to load). hopefully tomorrow i can solve these problems with a trip to braamfontein shopping center and a visit to the office of the building manager.

3. academic life: i spent an hour of my time today listening to a totally specious argument that universal human rights and utilitarianism are diametrically opposed. yes, because we never combine these two belief systems in institutions called "prisons" and suspend rights from a group that we argue poses a threat to the rest of the society, a group commonly known as "convicted criminals" in order to ensure the civil and political rights of the rest of the society.

surely, we can all agree that the criminal justice system is problematic in a variety of ways, but it exists, no? instead this guy stood in front of us posing wildly unlikely hypothetical utilitarian moments, such as: what if smallpox got dumped in a city? how this would affect the right to freedom of association? (what? could that get any more abstract?) so many better examples, all of which actually exist in history, could have been dissected. better luck next time. it's a pity because the readings we have are quite interesting.