Pre-Thanksgiving Links

Long time no blog! I've been working on a few different projects for school, which you'll get to see shortly. Right now I'm supposed to be packing up my apartment for Thanksgiving break, but I made the mistake of opening my blogroll first, and apparently a lot has happened in the past twenty four hours! And frankly, much of it makes me glad that I'm soon leaving the country! But here's what I'm reading this afternoon.

The Case Against Buying Christmas Presents by Leo Babauta.

A rant, but a good one. I like making and baking Christmas gifts! :D (Though that still means buying things, and stuff like fabric and yarn is often sort of treacherous environmentally and in terms of labor, being made cheaply far away, dyed with all sorts of suspicious stuff, and shipped miles to my local big box craft store...)

Some Occupy reading...

A short, interesting piece on Occupy Wall Street's office space from Mother Jones.

An amazing open letter calling for the resignation of the Cancellor of UC Davis from Professor Nathan Brown.

Occupy Minneapolis occupies a second foreclosed home from Think Progress

There's been some talk about what the Occupy movement should do next as cities make it more difficult to hold actual encampments, and I really like the idea of adopting Minneapolis's strategy of occupying foreclosed homes more widely. It targets a clear issue, brings real attention to the increasing poverty or near-poverty in this country, and has immediately visible results.

And finally, A long, detailed article on different perspectives of higher education by Steven Brint. As a college student, the question of "who should be in college and what should they be doing there?" is relevant to my interests.