05:24 am - QotD
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-11-06:
"The thing is: it's natural for people to assume that a fictional character of unspecified race is the same race as them. Similarly I have a strong memory of seeing a picture in my year nine RE class of a depiction of Jesus from a church in China. Their version of Jesus, of course, looked Chinese, which broke a few of our tiny fourteen year old brains. Jesus is Chinese in China, black in Africa, Caucasian in England. He might even be Jewish somewhere, but that seems rather unlikely." -- Daniel Hemmens, "Musings on Race in Fantasy or: Why Ron Weasley isn't Black"
(submitted to the mailing list by Kelly Groves)
To my friends observing the anniversary of the Babylonian seige of Jerusalem[*] today, is "May you have an easy fast" the appropriate greeting for Asarah b'Tevet, or is that reserved for Yom Kippur and Tisha b'Av?
[*] For folks who, like me, had to look it up: 2599 years ago unless I've screwed up at the BCE/CE boundary.