It’s grading time, so I will now regale everybody with funny grading stories.

A student was answering the question of “What were the only acceptable choices for women in Franco’s Spain?”

The answer I expected was “a wife, a mother, and a nun.” In the student’s interpretation, this response sounded as “a domestic slave, a breeder, and a nun.”

This week, I spent a lot of time meeting with students in my office, so I managed to read quite a lot of interesting posts from my blogroll between appointments. This is why this week’s list is so long. These are great articles, though. Enjoy!

Communists are the same everywhere. The second they come to power, they organize the sort of lavish lifestyles for the party leaders that few millionaires in capitalist countries enjoy. This is how this hypocrisy manifests itself in China.

An absolutely brilliant analysis of a marketing campaign for an expensive luxury product. OK, I need to say it again to get it out of my system. The post is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

“The growing number of Muslim students are boycotting lectures on evolution saying they cannot take courses in the subject because it is opposed to their religious beliefs.” Did anybody explain to these so-called students that they made a choice to get educated at a secular institution, which makes their religious beliefs of no interest to anybody? The hypocrisy of these religious fanatics (of all religions) who want to enjoy all the benefits of a secular society while working hard to undermine it is appalling.

“It struck me that it’s like people have been asleep for 40 years and just woke up and blame Obama for everything that’s gone wrong since the fall of Saigon.”

The teenagers are losing interest in cars. If this is true, then it’s the best news I’ve heard all week. Yes, it’s been a harsh week.

Planning to vote for Mitt Romney? Here is a great humorous post on the subject from one of my favorite conservative authors.

Jürgen Habermas on a mission to save the European Union.

Download Jonathan Mayhew’s book The Twilight of the Avant-Garde for free. Don’t worry, the author doesn’t mind. I find that reading Jonathan’s prose helps to improve my own writing style, so I’m happy to be reading this book on my Kindle.

A great one-line post.

Why the #Occupy Toronto protest failed.

Politicians try to please the lobbyists by destroying the Internet. Let’s do all we can to prevent that from happening!

Debunking the tired old cliche of “American exceptionalism.” How can people who use this concept in all earnestness fail to know that every single nation in the world always believes itself exceptional?

“UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering; it also eliminated a master’s program in comparative literature and courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation. The cultivation of “a student’s understanding of her or his identity,” as the diversity requirement proposal put it, would focus on “African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, or other groups” through the “framework” of “race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.”” I had to quote this entire passage because what UC San Diego is doing is simply egregious.

I find it especially entertaining when people blame their miserable personal lives not on their own pathetic excuse for a personality but on the bugbear of feminism. Here, for example, is a guy who warns the world that “nagging wife is always inside them” (women.) For obvious reasons, nobody reads this loser’s blog, so let’s make his day and give him some hits, even if only to ridicule him.

The President of the Modern Languages Association makes a statement aimed at destroying the PhD in Literature. Right you are, Dr. Berman! Who needs a stupid dissertation for a PhD when you can demonstrate kick-ass computer skills, instead? Who on Earth elected this individual to the presidency of the MLA and why did they do that?

“The idea of having one’s own personal library of physical books, so useful in earlier times, is no longer worth passing on to our students . . .  Eliminating physical books from college campuses would be a positive step for our 21st-century students, and, I believe, for 21st-century scholarship as well.” That’s Chronicle of Higher Ed for you, people. I vote we rename it into Chronicle of Destroying Higher Ed. Who’s with me on this?

Help a great blogger make an important mustache-related decision.

On how scientists are harassed into inventing non-existent organic causes for the completely fictitious “chronic fatigue syndrome.”

If you are a job seeker, it’s best not to hide your emotions. Advice from highly successful professional recruiters.

Check out this great new blog by a blogger from Dubai. He posts really cool ads and photos with some very insightful analysis. I already added him to my blogroll and suggest you do the same. The blog really rocks.

As a feminist, I find this completely insulting: “On Monday, after a number of women complained of “overly aggressive” men dominating events, OWS has, for the first time, instigated a series of female-led meetings where only women can speak.” I don’t need a group of people to be silenced for their physiology in order to have a voice. Bleh, how disgusting.

A very insightful post on the differences between Christianity and Buddhism.

Israeli propaganda machine has really gone off the deep end. It’s very sad to see how unbridled nationalistic hysteria drives a country to self-destruct.