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The High Holy Days are upon us. No, not that one. The high holy days of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

And with that, come the culture wars again. Some pundits Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc. issue annual statements about the pagan origins of Halloween, and why their community should not participate in it. Certain Christian preachers like Pat Robertson opine:

The whole idea of trick-or-treating is the Druids would go to somebodys house and ask for money and if they didnt get money theyd kill one of their sheep, that was the sheep and it was serious stuff. All this business about goblins and jack-o-lanterns all comes out of demonic rituals of the Druids and the people who lived in England at that particular time.

In my own community, many Muslim leaders are politically quite progressive (against racism, against empire, against wealth disparity) but somewhat culturally conservative. In a widely circulated blog post by Imam Zaid Shakir, the charismatic American Muslim leader who is often favorably compared to Malcolm X, he offered a dismissal of Halloween:

One the tragedies of our times is found in the easy willingness some Muslims accept practices, rituals or cultural symbols that have their roots in demonic or occult practices.

This is not going to be one of those columns.

I find myself in a different space. I have zero interest in endorsing or rejecting Halloween on the basis of fitting in, assimilating to, or rejecting mainstream culture. I couldnt tell you anything about the Druids without going on Wikipedia. My concern has nothing to do with the historic origin of Halloween because, lets be honest, many of our religious traditions (and even buildings) have pagan roots. It has to do with what Halloween does for our community, or at least for my neighborhood.

A teenage girl tries on a Halloween costume in Miami, Florida. Halloween is now the second-largest commercial holiday in the United States according to National Retail Federation. Americans spent approximately billion on Halloween in 2013.

Yes, I struggle with certain parts of Halloween. I struggle to see 10-year-old girls dressed up in ways that project a type of precious sexuality. It breaks my heart to see the girls' costume aisle look like something out of a sick, perverted male fantasy. Rape culture, indeed.

Yes, lets just stop with the sexy Ebola nurse outfits, please. Or the female ISIS-fighter costumes.

Excerpt from:
Omid Safi: In praise of Halloween's ability to connect neighbors

OK Go - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?
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Want to stay focused when reading about a topic on Wikipedia, but your curiosity is piqued by the links in the text? Check out this Chrome extension to stay on track.

Visiting Wikipedia to look up information on one topic generally means reading up on several others. The links within the text body are meant to be useful, but can sometimes turn into a huge time sink.

Web comic xkcd illustrates this situation perfectly in "The Problem with Wikipedia." Sometimes, it's just too tempting to click those links to learn about something else.

If you want to stay focused when you're checking out a specific topic, Lifehacker recommends using WikiTweaks for your Chrome browser. WikiTweaks adjusts the formatting of each entry on Wikipedia and adds pop-up summaries of those tempting links, keeping you on the right page.

To get started, install a copy of WikiTweaks for your Google Chrome browser.

A summary pops up for the link. Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

Head to a topic on Wikipedia. This example will work with panna cotta. As you can see, there are lots of links within the text to tell you about other topics such as: Italian, simmering and even gelatin. Just mouse over one of the links and a small summary will appear. This summary has been pulled from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for that topic.

WikiTweaks button has a recent Wikipedia history. Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET

Another difference you may notice is the formatting of the entire Wikipedia page. Now there is less space in the left and right margins, which makes more use of your screen real estate. Lastly, if you click the WikiTweaks button, you'll see a list of recently viewed Wikipedia entries.

This extension makes Wikipedia more user-friendly by helping you find out what a linked word refers to, without losing track of what you went to the site for in the first place.

The rest is here:
Use WikiTweaks to avoid distractions on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the first place many people turn to online to find answers, but the website's gender imbalance means the contribution of leading women in academia is going unrecognised in the annals of the world's largest digital encyclopaedia.

Despite the website's reach, exceeding more than 34 million pages and spanning a diverse range of topics from biographies to world events, women are significantly underrepresented on Wikipedia.

Faced with a paucity of female entries on Wikipedia's peer-edited pages, the University of Sydney will lead a 'wikibombing' activation on Friday and launch a campaign to bolster the online profile of more than 100 women who are leaders in their field.

University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Dr Michael Spence said the edit-a-thon is the first in a series of events connected with the Women at Sydney symposium being hosted on Saturday, and aims to improve the reporting and coverage of women online.

"The University of Sydney was one of the first universities in the world to admit students solely on academic merit and to open its doors to women on the same basis as men," Dr Spence said.

"For more than 160 years, the University of Sydney has cultivated bold thinking and leadership, and this wikibombing endeavour is a continuation of our commitment to leadership on gender equality.

"It's important that we honour women who are paving the way and promote their work on the web to ensure they are recognised for their leadership and celebrated as role models."

The University Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson said volunteers at the edit-a-thon will become editors to ensure 100 women's contribution to academia, business and the community will be recorded on Wikipedia.

"There are hundreds of entries for notable University of Sydney women in the nation's pre-eminent dictionary of national biography, The Australian Dictionary of Biography, but a scarce few are mentioned on Wikipedia," Ms Hutchinson said.

"In fact, of 300 entries of eminent women from the University of Sydney detailed in the authoritative dictionary biographies, only 34 have Wikipedia articles.

Originally posted here:
University deploys wikibomb because it believes a woman's place is on the web

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