“Another Goldman Sachs idiot“. A brilliant post.

“My kids don’t come first. My FAMILY comes first. Kids who come first end up being entitled little pricks with helicopter parents who are PITA in the classroom and in life until they get beaten down when they’re finally away from their parents. Our family is a team with all members equally important.” It gladdens my heart to read posts from such wonderful, intelligent, reasonable parents. If I do have children, I will print this out in huge letters and hang it on my wall.

And another great post from the same great blogging tandem. It brightened up a very gray and busy morning I was having, so I’m sharing it in hopes you will feel the same.

God save us all from profs who hate their profession and their life so much and then advise young people about what to do while being blinded by their own misery.

An inventive prof who came up with an admirable plot to have fun in a dead classroom. I so wish I’d thought of this last semester when I had a dead classroom of my own!

“The difference, like a lot of the differences between the Sciences and the Humanities, is political. As I have noted in the past, science (if done correctly) is inherently apolitical (with, of course, some exceptions for fields such as ‘evolutionary psychology,’ which are entangled with messy assumptions about Human nature). The Humanities, which deal appropriately enough with activities and phenomena that Humans are actually likely to experience on a day-to-day basis, are inherently politicized. And being politicized, everyone feels entitled to an opinion, no matter how ill-informed they are in practice.” There is a lot more in this brilliant brilliant brilliant post by a talented young physicist.

An egregiously sexist ad.

Does ADHD exist or is it a tool of social engineering?

An article that bashes women who work even though it agrees with the obvious and well-known fact that “Stay-at-home moms had more depression symptoms than the working moms in the study – a conclusion other studies have also found.”

Gender-Neutral Pronouns and One-Letter Words.

I haven’t written anything about Trayvon Martin but this brilliant blogger did and, after this post, I have nothing left to add.

“20 to 40 percent of all immigrants to the United States ultimately return to their native lands.”

Three issues that divide China’s Communist elite.

This blogger must be a mind reader: “I have grand dreams of millions of job interviewees telling HR to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine so that employers might start changing their tune.” I have the same dream, people.

I love these posts by a Dutchman who is discovering the US because many of the things that he finds strange and unexpected are the same phenomena that have baffled me when I first arrived in the country. Here is a very interesting post from this blogger.

As if the 2009 nomination of the extremely stupid and corrupt Larry Summers for a key position in the economy had not been enough, President Obama puts in place a completely unqualified leader for the World Bank: “Next, the President may nominate  a ballet dancer or a basketball player, or whoever else takes his personal fancy,  to key roles in the global economy. Now surely such nominees might perform better than Summers or Romer ever could.” Hear, hear! I only want to add that the nomination of Summers in 2009 was the moment when I lost faith in Obama very early into his presidency. I felt personally betrayed, in a way, by that nomination.

And this is the kind of professor of economics that makes me happy I never had the misfortune of encountering such a prof in college: “And while he’s quite willing to argue that “slavery was appalling because it treated human beings as a commodity, to be bought and sold at auction,” he never raises a question about the buying and selling of labor power. In other words, he presumes we all know that human chattel, the buying and selling of human beings, is morally wrong but he doesn’t touch on a key ingredient of market society: the fact that large numbers of human beings are forced to have the freedom to sell their ability to work for a wage.” As a descendant of slaves, I find any comparison of slavery with working for a wage to be absolutely appalling.

And the title of the post of the week goes to: “A Disabled Feminist Goes to the Movies: The Business of Being Born.” I wanted to cull a quote out of the post but then I realized that it is too good not to be read in its entirety.

Who is the most wonderful, amazing, intellectual, fantastic person in the universe?

Of course, it’s you.

And you are starting the best decade of your life so far right now!

You are, without a doubt, the most wonderful person in the universe.

Happy 30th Birthday, kid!

I love you more than words can tell.

I have heard some version of the following more times than I have hairs on my head:

Expecting sexual heat to endure (without any increase in effort) for years is unrealistic.

Since, for me, life without sexual passion is not a life worth living, I had even decided at a certain point that a long-term relationship was not for me.

The approximate duration of the “sexual heat” period that people usually name is between 6 months and 2 years. I’ve heard these stories over and over again. The passion cools down and transforms into something that is good in its own way because it’s calmer and more profound. Or something equally disturbing.

Well, you know what? None of this is true. I have no idea where people are getting this from. Maybe they had no actual passion for each other to begin with.

I, however, know for a fact that sometimes the heat not only endures for years but actually intensifies with every passing day.

Maybe 4 years 9 months and 18 days is not that long but, right now, the passion is rapidly growing. And it has not yet occurred to me what kind of an “effort” I might need to bring to the process.

Of course, I’ll keep you updated on the progress of this passion. N. and I are planning to have wild orgies in the retirement home 50 years from now. Stay tuned.

One of the reasons I like living in the US is that the people here are really fascinating. Last week, I started talking with this man I always see around my department and who greets me in Russian (which is unusual for this area.)

He told me that he’d been a soldier in the Vietnam War, then came home, and worked hard for the sake of his family.

“At this point in my life,” he said, “money is not an issue to me. Now I want to make a different sort of investment in the future, not a monetary one. I’m doing a PhD in American History and I want to do academic research on the Vietnam War.”

He also believes that it is crucial for a historian to speak different languages, so he is taking language courses and becoming something of a polyglot.

People, you have got to watch this video. It is hilarious. Really, watch it:

 

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the student who had a violent outburst and threatened to kill students and the professor during a class on evolution:

A student at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was reportedly subdued with a taser after a violent outburst in a class discussing evolution. Jonatha Carr’s apparent meltdown, in which she hit another student, threw punches, and allegedly threatened to kill the professor and other students, was recorded on a cell phone camera and has quickly gone viral. . .

Fellow student Rachel Bustamante wrote that Carr was asking “absurd questions”during a review section about female selection among peacocks, and eventually went on to ask why “evolution kills black people” in an increasingly insistent manner.

What I find very annoying is that, in every discussion of this event, somebody immediately states that the video of this student’s unraveling doesn’t show what was said before the outburst. (Just scroll to the comments in the link I provided, for example.) As if there is anything anybody can say that can possibly excuse such vile behavior. Then, there are also comments about this woman’s alleged stress levels, poverty, and the pressures of the college grading system (scroll to the comments here) that somehow excuse beating other students during class. And there is also the most bizarre suggestion of all, which is that Trayvon Martin’s tragedy makes this sort of behavior acceptable.

No, people. No, no, no. If somebody is old enough to go to college, then they are also old enough to keep their stress, annoyance, outrage, reaction to the news feed, or whatever else, under control.

We all have some traumatic shit going on in our lives and in our societies. Recently, a young woman was gang raped and set on fire by a group of men in Ukraine. None of them will suffer any consequences because they are from rich families. The story is so painful to me on a variety of levels that I haven’t even blogged about it. But another thing I haven’t done is unleash my anger on my students who are obviously not guilty of the situation.

People will continue throwing these vicious tantrums whenever life gets too hard as long as there is somebody willing to offer a list of excuses for how they were driven to behave horribly by forces outside of their control.

I’m also really annoyed by repeated suggestions that this outburst just has to be a sign of mental illness (scroll down to the comments here). Unless you are this person’s physician, it is not your place to diagnose her with mental illness. Besides, this idea that people can’t behave violently and disrespectfully because that is what they choose to do and that there should always be some treatable condition behind such behavior is really silly.

The more excuses we offer for this kind of outrageous behavior instead of simply condemning it as absolutely and completely wrong, the more likely it is that tomorrow somebody will decide to victimize us because they are in a bad mood or can’t get their shit together for whatever reason.

I’m getting an increased number of blog-related emails, and while some of them are really great, there are also many that are extremely annoying. So here are the lists of the kinds of emails I like getting and the ones I detest.

Annoying emails:

– The most annoying type of email is the one that says something like the following: “I have done extensive research on a topic (an extremely stupid topic is provided). I’m willing to allow you to publish this post on your blog FREE of charge. In return, I ask that you place the following links on your blog.”

I understand that this is nothing but a clumsy way to place advertisement but it’s annoying nonetheless. One could at least glance at the blog whose author one is pestering with such condescending emails. That would allow one to observe that I hardly struggle to come up with posts and will not really fall over with joy that somebody is offering me a post for free. I guess the suggestion here is that I normally pay people to write my posts. Seriously, the gall is daunting.

– The second most annoying type of email is where people I never even corresponded with before offer me completely unsolicited advice on how I could improve my blog and “attract more allies”, whatever that means. Unsurprisingly, these folks have no blogs of their own, so their advice is not informed by any actual experience on creating great blogs. (I would gladly listen to advice from popular bloggers but, for some reason, they are not writing in.) 🙂

– Another annoying type of email invariably starts with, “Hey Clarissa, what you should do. . .” I always stop writing immediately after that and put the author of such emails on a Spam list. No mentally stable person would start their first communication with a complete stranger by telling them what they should do. And I don’t want to waste my time on weird people.

– And I also hate emails that tell me I’m too aggressive and that supposedly scares readers away. For some reason, people who say that keep coming to the blog like they are glued to it. I guess my aggressiveness does not scare them all that much.

Lovely emails:

– I especially appreciate emails where people send me links to stories they’d like me to comment on. This is extremely helpful, so thank you, folks!

– I also appreciate emails where people ask me for advice. I have had an opportunity to connect with a variety of young people in several countries who are curious about how the American or Canadian system of higher ed works, who are trying to figure out whether they should go to grad school and how to go about applying, who are conflicted about their choice of a career path, who want to know if certain things they’ve heard about the education system in North America are true. Some people write in a moment of sadness or loneliness and just need for somebody to reach out to them in that difficult moment. I feel like I really can help people here, and it makes me feel good to be able to do that.

– Of course, I also love emails where people tell me nice things about the blog and why it matters to them that I keep writing.

– And it’s great to get emails that ask me for interviews because that makes me feel important. I’ve already been interviewed about the blog in writing, by Skype, and by phone. I have also been asked to appear on a radio show but I had to refuse because that was not a good moment for me.

– Another pleasing type of emails is where people want to use my blog for their academic research. I’ve learned about some truly fascinating research in that way.

I have to say that the number of good, kind, positive emails outweighs the annoying ones by far.

Thank you for writing!

A long-time reader of this blog and a fellow St.Louisan Nancy P. offered this brilliant suggestion as to how one should respond to (potential) employers’ requests that one give them one’s Facebook password:

I will consider your request when you have gathered original copies of privacy releases from the “friends” and from any others who may have been seen in a photo on my private Facebook page. I also require you to obtain from Facebook’s general counsel a specifically worded consent for you to access my private Facebook page via password. The action of giving a password to some person other than the registered user is considered a violation of terms of service, and may be illegal. Furthermore, I suspect that you would like to prevent your company from being banned or sued by Facebook. Lawyers in most civil suits take a scattershot method of naming defendents, and any sloppiness on your part in obtaining all consents from “friends” and any people present in photos on the private site may expose you to lawsuits from these individuals, and possibly lawsuits by Facebook corporate defendant in any countersuit. Needless to say, I would be a target of all lawsuits as well, but generally plaintiffs’ lawyers pursue corporate deep pockets, and individuals with relatively few assets are assigned minimal responsibility.

Brava Nancy P.!

Some people should really chew more and speak less. Here is yet another idiotic article on the subject of the Russian performers who vandalized an Orthodox cathedral:

About a month ago, I wrote about Pussy Riot’s exciting brand of activism.

Yes, you did, you ignorant fool who is projecting her own cultural reality onto a completely different country she despises too much to learn anything about before firing off stupid posts.

After the group’s demonstration at Christ the Savior Cathedral, alleged Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested and detained. . . The arrests occurred the day before the election, possibly in an effort to prevent protests after Putin’s election.

A simple Google search would reveal to this idiot that the post-election protests had been planned a long time in advance, and their organizers had obtained official permits to assemble peacefully, which is their constitutional right. They had absolutely no trouble obtaining the permits. The protests took place and the police made no effort to prevent them from happening. (I have a mountain of links to the accounts of people who participated in the protests, in case anybody is interested.) This entire Pussy Riot debacle had absolutely no influence on the protests and was not in any way related to them.

Pussy Riot’s detractors are accusing them of blasphemy.

These money-hungry performers tried to self-promote by violating a place of worship that has a very tragic history and is a sacred space not only for the members of the Orthodox Church but for everybody who has even a modicum of appreciation for the history and culture of Russia. Maybe I’ll write a post about the Christ the Savior Cathedral later on because it has a truly fascinating history. Blasphemy or not, this was an act of vandalism and a hate crime. If you don’t agree, then consider how you’d feel about me if I ran into a mosque or a synagogue and yelled, “I shit on your Allah or your Yahve, you stupid swine!” Just remember that Christ the Savior Cathedral has pretty much the same meaning to the members of the Russian Orthodox Church as the Holy Temple in Jerusalem does  for the Jews.

If the author of this stupid post were, indeed, a feminist (which she claims to be, but which she very obviously is not), she would mention that the truly appalling thing about this entire situation is the number of suggestions that the arrested members of Pussy Riot be released because “they are women and mothers” that has been appearing in the Russian press. This double standard is an insult to women everywhere.

People are asking me why I’m not blogging about the student protests in Quebec, so here is my contribution to that discussion.

The students are protesting the plans to raise their tuition by $325 per year (my links here are in French.) Right now, the cost of tuition in Quebec is the lowest in Canada. Students from the province pay about $3,000 per year to study at McGill University, one of the best universities in the world and my alma mater.

These students are smart enough to realize that this apparently small tuition hike is only the beginning. If they don’t fight this, very soon their tuition will reach the much higher education costs of other provinces.

Now I have to remind you that the people of Quebec pay a whole lot of taxes. I mean a shitload of taxes. They should be getting something in return, such as, for example, accessible higher education for their children. These insane amounts of money they pay in taxes should not be going to feed the fat cats of the humongous and constantly growing federal and provincial bureaucracy. This proposed tuition hike is an absolute disgrace and anybody who has seen a tax return of a Quebecois person will have to agree.

The only reason why my sister and I were able to get a great education in Montreal as new immigrants fresh off the airplane is that the tuition was very accessible. Now we are both very productive members of society. My sister has her own business in Quebec, and you know what? She pays a shitload of taxes and, since the business is growing, creates jobs for other residents of Quebec. Who, then, also pay a lot of taxes. Shouldn’t she, at the very least, have the certainty that her daughter will be able to afford to go to college without incurring a ruinous debt?

This is a crucial moment in the history of Quebec. The people of my beautiful province do not deserve to have the rights they’ve been working so hard to acquire stripped away from them by money-hungry bureaucrats. The suggestion by the government that there isn’t enough money to maintain the current tuition rates is ludicrous. There is money aplenty. And it should be up to the people of Quebec to decide whether they prefer to feed the bureaucrats or educate their own children.