short takes (religion, though I didn't set out to have a theme)

Why I am considering staying in the Methodist Church, written by a committed member of the church who is a target of their discrimination. (Link via kayre.)

Thomas Jefferson on church and state, posted by dglenn in honor of the national day of prayer.

For Pittsburghers: Panim el panim, a discussion/panel with my rabbi, someone from the Islamic Center, and an Episcopal reverend. May 15, 4pm.

Tomorrow night's Shabbat service is another musical one. This will be the third; I really liked the first two. It looks like we are going to do this after the summer, too; Tuesday night we held auditions for an in-house band. Got a dozen people, which is great! (I wasn't there, so I don't know what skill levels we're dealing with, but I know we've got some good musicians in the congregation. I decided I'm too busy right now.)

This summer there will be one Shabbat when both rabbis will be away (and the cantor will be two weeks past her due date, so if she's still pregnant she'll probably be grumpy). So the worship committee will lead that Friday's service. Usually when groups (committees, brotherhood, etc) lead services, someone in the office assigns parts and mails out annotated photocopies ("tell them to stand here", "read this in Hebrew", "read this responsively in English", etc). That kind of bugs me, so at last night's meeting of the worship committee I said: Look, we're the worship committee; if we can't just lead a service out of the siddur, there's something wrong. So if you want to participate in this service and you don't normally come on Friday nights, you should come a few times in the next two months. At the next meeting we're going to look at the siddur and assign parts. I expected at least a little griping, but got none. Yay.

jobs meme

Most recently from rani23: list all the (paying) jobs you've ever had.

cook/cashier/flunky (sub shop, not a burger joint)
proofreader
typesetter (mmm, chemical fumes! really!)
grader (sociology)
research assistant (same sociology prof)
scullery maid [1]
teaching assistant (computer science)
technical writer [2]
programmer
customer support manager (technically... [3])
web developer
musician [4]
Edit: lab rat [5]

I think that's everything, though it's possible I missed some stuff from the college days. I've never babysat, waited tables, or had a paper route.

[1] One summer I worked at an inn at Pennsic. I got a W-2 (or maybe it was a 1099) and everything! For one weekend's worth of work!

[2] First as an undergrad member of a project team, once as a student intern, and several times professionally.

[3] We didn't actually have any customers; I was supposed to create infrastructure so we'd be ready when we did. That was a small part of my job in practice, and eventually I got them to give me a more accurate job title.

[4] Yeah, I've actually been hired for a few solo gigs, again with 1099s and the whole bit.

[5] It wasn't a "job" in the conventional sense, but I made a non-trivial amount of money in college by participating in just about every paying research study that didn't involve consuming chemicals. This was especially helpful during my freshman year, when I didn't yet know that by the time you show up on campus in the fall it's too late to get most work-study jobs.