Peculiar week right?  On moment I’m watching tweets about Gaddafi being killed and a day later President Obama is telling us the troops are coming home January 1st.  I say it’s peculiar because, well, it is always peculiar when you find yourself a little…I don’t know the word really…happy or satisfied at the news that a murderous tyrant has been killed.  We’re supposed to be happy right, but not too happy because we wanted him captured.  But we’ll take killed over escaped because that’s the logic of war?  Libya can begin again as one of the rebel fighters put it.  Still, I was at the bodega Friday night and heard a woman gasp loudly.  Thinking she must have hurt herself I turned around and saw that she was responding to the New York Post‘s cover shot of a lifeless and bloody Gaddafi being carried across Libya.  The decorum we showed in not printing Osama bin Laden snuff was clearly out the window.  Anyone who cheered for a dead Gaddafi got to see the gore for themselves.  Perhaps it serves us right.  With our troops headed home for Christmas many of us finally get to breath a sigh of relief as parents, siblings and lovers return.  There’s a whole new crop of young activist down at Liberty Plaza who were still in grade school when some off us took the streets to try and stop these loved ones from being shipped there in the first place.  What have they come home to?  What have they left behind in Iraq?

Politics was in the air here on the Commons all week.  The 2012 Campaign blog was filled with great posts:  There was a wonderful recap of the Solyndra scandal that’s tarnished the White House’s efforts to jump start the green economy.  There was a post on the ever growing shadow army of private contractors that will remain in Iraq long after our troops return home.  A final blog from the 2012 folks looked at Obama’s fundraising prowess, especially in light both Romney’s and Perry’s impressive warchests.

Joseph Ugoretz over at Prestidigitation dropped in to share that smarthistory.org has teamed up with Khan Academy.  Both of these are wonderful online education resources and get mentioned quite a bit here on the Commons.  Also – Joseph it’s good to see you on the blogs again!  Come back!

OpenAccess@CUNY blogged a wonderful resource about the ridiculous prices for journal subscriptions.  I always had a vague idea of subscription prices – somewhere between “a lot” and “ouch” but I had no idea that they were this high.   Apparently some run up to 20K a year?  This is why I’m glad the Commons is crawling with librarians.

There were so many great posts this week, sorry I didn’t get to everyone!

Till next week.