The news is at least a week old, but I would be remiss if I failed to notice that the infamous Howie Schaffer, who authored and popularized the PEN Weekly Newsblast e-newsletter and has been a great friend to this blog, is off to Diversity Best Practices, an organization dedicated to “improving cultural and racial sensitivity in the workplace.” Longtime readers will recall that Schaffer was profiled as one of the HotSeat interviews early last year, in which he opined on all sorts of interesting things. “On the HotSeat, “SuperHowie” Schaffer slams empty school reform ideas and lame blogs, comes clean about his sketchy past as a spammer, crushes on his favorite education writers (platonically, of course), and claims that the Blast is an equal-opportunity critic. Right, Howie.” Congrats and condolences. Stay in touch.