it's official

Sorry blog activity has been nil... I have been very busy with classes. But! I have an announcement:

October degrees were conferred by Columbia today. I am officially a PhD.

amusing if it weren't terrifying

Qaddafi would be hilarious if he didn't actually hold power over an entire country:

"We want to know who killed [JFK]. Somebody by the name of Lee Harvey and then...another, Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey. Why did this Israeli kill the killer of Jack Kennedy?... The whole world should know that Kennedy wanted to investigate the nuclear reactor of the Israeli demon."
-- Muammar Qaddafi, addressing the UN for the first time. His personal translator collapsed 75 minutes into the 96-minute speech, reportedly shouting, "I just can't take it anymore."

(h/t Doonesbury)

felix triumphator et semper groovius

I realize that although I did comment on twitter, I didn't make it clear on the blog -- I did pass my dissertation defense. It went very well. Some important points and difficult questions came up, but more in the spirit of what I should do when I turn the study into a book rather than as commentaries on deficiencies of the thesis itself.

I was given a "Pass with Minor Revisions" (for the most part typos) and then my colleagues welcomed me into the circle of PhDs by banging on the table and chanting, "We accept him, we accept him! One of us, one of us! Gooble gobble."

defense

Well, today, Sept. 11 (!) at 4:30 PM EST, I will be defending my dissertation before a committee of five professors. Please say a prayer for me.

Today is the feast of St Cyprian, who actually shows up and hangs around in my second chapter as patron of the cathedral of Leon, the bishop of which at one point was also named Cyprian. The chapter section is called "The Two Cyprians." So maybe that's a good sign.

On the other hand, I could swear I saw vultures circling over me on Staten Island yesterday.

So, prayers, please.

the terrible turkish executioner (1904)

By Georges Méliès.

Melies - The terrible turkish executione
by kinetoscope

(h/t Voyages Extraodinaires).

rachid taha

I love this song by the French-Algerian singer Rachid Taha. The video is pretty funny as well. The lyrics can be found here.



He also does a version of "Rock the Casbah" in Arabic!

viva barney