Mubaraks

Kate Spear-Brodsky and Louai Abu-Osba – NYTimes.com. In truth, she wasn’t sure what to make of Mr. Abu-Osba, who wore his hair in long dreadlocks. “I thought he was a little bit nerdy,” Ms. Spear-Brodsky said. “He was very sweet and flirty in an innocent way, but I just wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend at the time. Also, he had no game whatsoever.”

Book Review – Holy Ignorance – By Olivier Roy – NYTimes.com. Yule as we celebrate it today owes more to Charles Dickens than to Thomas Aquinas. Our major solstice holiday is what Roy calls a “cultural construct” rather than a sectarian ceremony, which explains why Muslims buy halal turkeys and Jews transformed Hanukkah into a gift-giving occasion. Mistakenly believing that Christmas is sacred, those who defend it find themselves propping up the profane. The Christ they want in Christmas is a product not of Nazareth but of Madison Avenue.