I’m eagerly awaiting a manifestation by the participants in  the Chick-Fil-A appreciation day in defense of Adam M. Smith:

An executive at a medical manufacturing firm lost his job after a YouTube video of him verbally ambushing a young employee at a Tucson Chick-fil-A went viral. Adam Smith, formerly Chief Financial Officer at Vante, stepped down after the video — which Smith shot and uploaded himself —caused embarrassment to the company.

Roger Vogel, Chairman, President and CEO of Vante, said the decision for Smith to step down was mutual. Vogel said he was “shocked” by the video, which he first discovered when people emailed him a link.

“We obviously found it very disturbing,” Vogel said. “We respect everybody’s ability to share their opinions in the public square and we have a very diverse workforce with a diverse set of opinions. We expect employees to behave in a professional manner that’s commensurate with their positions, and discuss their opinions in a civil fashion. … We thought what he did was inappropriate.”

Vogel said the company has no stance on the gay marriage issue but has always hade a “good relationship” with Chick-fil-A. He said the company will consider contacting the employee Smith ambushed in an attempt to mend fences.

The guy was fired for exercising his right to free speech. We’ve been hearing time and again from the Chick-Fil-A supporters that they support the right to free speech even when they find said speech hateful. This must mean that we will soon hear all about the date when the “Adam M. Smith Appreciation Day” is scheduled, right?

And now let the litany of “Yes, but. . .” begin.

By huge popular demand, the cursing and swearing thread is back! As the new academic year approaches, all of us who have been suffering from annoying heat and a variety of aggravating life circumstances can vent our grievances and release some steam by cursing as loud as possible on Clarissa’s Blog.

I will leave this post  sticky for a while, so scroll down for new posts. Feel free to assume an anonymous identity for the swearing purposes. Let it all out and tell everybody and everything all you feel like saying. If it helps to cuss me out, do that. Swearing in all languages is acceptable and encouraged. This is supposed to be a cathartic experience, so don’t let any false feeling of propriety stop you.

Let the cursing begin.

Here is an opinion:

President Obama could bomb Iran in late October to try and ensure that it does not develop nuclear weapons. A devastating strike would create an upsurge of patriotism in America and fully neutralize Mitt Romney’s contention that Obama is a foreign-policy wimp. It could allow Obama to sweep to victory in November.

And here is a different one:

Obama certainly could do this, but there shouldn’t be any illusions that it would give him a significant advantage in the election. There probably would be a surge in support for Obama at first, since this seems to happen at the beginning of almost every military engagement, but it wouldn’t last. I suspect a very war-weary public would sour on the war very quickly once it became apparent that attacking Iran involved more than a few days of casualty-free airstrikes.

Note that both commenters agree that bombing Iran would create a surge of support for the President. They only differ on how permanent this surge would be. This analysis sounds completely off to me. Do you believe that the American people would really rally  around a president (whether for a short while or not) who gets the country into yet another resource-devouring quagmire in the midst of stagnating economy?

I don’t vote, of course, but if Obama does this, I won’t want to hear about him ever again. If he continues Bush Jr.’s strategy of invading everything he can in search for elusive WMDs, what’s the point of keeping him around?

Do you agree that any military action against Iran will be a horrible mistake that might have tragic consequences for the entire planet? Or will you feel “an upsurge of patriotism” and support a president who orders a strike on Iran?

Recently, I quoted a scandalous article that asked “Is Romney a Wimp?” I hate it when this sexist terminology seeps into political discourse, but I have to ask, for how long will Obama be wimping out under the pressure from the Pentagon?

If you sincerely believe that

Men are disproportionately represented at the extremes of intelligence (morons and geniuses): above the IQ level of 170, the genius level, there are thirty timesas many men as women. (Again, there are evolutionary reasons for this.)

then try to make it a little less obvious that you fall in the moron category.

I highly recommend the post because its author rolls out a bunch of hilarious platitudes that, in his moronic mind, are supposed to prove that he is superior to women, people of color, non-Christians, and everybody who is not exactly like him. What makes the post valuable is that it demonstrates how bigots justify their hatred of the universe. I know it’s wrong to laugh at somebody so stupid but I’m working on a very difficult project and I need all the humor I can get.

The following letter was published in Inside Higher Ed:

I’ve been doing research on how to become a professor, and I’ve stumbled across your blog. I’m almost done with a B.S. in Astrophysics, and I know I essentially need a PhD in order to have a real chance to be hired at any college/university. My main concern is that when I finish my PhD in a few years, there won’t be any jobs at a community college (currently my goal, as I love my tutoring job more than I believe I will ever love research) that will hire a white male physicist with no post-doc, and a degree from a school barely in the top 50. And if I do land a job, how much ‘playing the game’, as my IT major roommate put it, do I have to do? Is it purely based on how well I teach, or is there a degree of sucking up to the boss and being ‘overtly sophisticated at a luncheon’, as an example of how my roommate explained he would have to play the game is his field. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not asking if I can be a jerk and expect to keep my job. I just want to know how to get a job as a CC professor and keep it.

My friendly advice: just grow the fuck up, you little fool.  Any other suggestions are welcome.

I also wanted to share with you a photo of my owl ring that I bought in the Dominican Republic. People everywhere start shrieking with delight when they see it.

The great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva collected silver rings. She lived and died in the most dire poverty imaginable but, during the times when she had some money, she had boxes filled with unusual weirdly shaped silver rings that she gave as gifts by the handful to people she liked.

I also love my weird silver rings. People even refer to me as “the prof with the rings.”

Do you see this cute pink object I’m holding against the background of tomatoes? It’s a watermelon knife! I had no idea they even existed.

Has anybody used them? Do they work at all?

What I love about this country is that people never stop inventing stuff.

This is not my definition but it blows my mind with how good it is.

“You can see the difference between good parents and bad parents in the goals they pursue.

Bad parents want their child to become a lawyer / get a college degree / get married / have children / make a lot of money / learn to play the piano / be an athlete, etc. The child is an agent of their desires. S/he is supposed to structure his / her life in a way that will enable the parents to live out their fantasy vicariously.

Good parents don’t want any of this. They want to become redundant. This is their central goal: they work to ensure that the child is prepared to deal independently with the world, generate desires of his or her own, and work towards fulfilling them in any way s/he sees fit.”

 

Over a dozen times in the past week I have seen words “tasty” and “delicious” placed next to a description of Chick-Fil-A meals. This has got me wondering. Are people who write such things completely nuts? We have this pathetic excuse for food sold on our campus and I tried it twice. It tastes completely disgusting. The so-called chicken is made of stale cardboard. The fries are soggy and extremely oversalted. I felt woozy and bloated for hours after I ate this shit. A while later, I even tried it one other time to make sure I was giving the place the benefit of the doubt. Bleh! I still want to vomit as I think about it. Burger King is a Michelin-quality joint compared to Chick-Fil-A*.

I understand that nobody cares about the nutritional properties of this garbage in the midst of an important discussion on gay rights. But as much as I abhor the homophobic beliefs of people who flocked to the chain and bought its disgusting junk to support the hateful beliefs of its owners, I couldn’t help feeling compassion for the folks who not only bought but actually ate – put in their bodies! – crazy amounts of this poison in the midst of a heavy heat wave. I mean, go ahead buy it to support hatred everywhere, that’s your God-given right, but at least don’t consume the crap.

In my Spanish Beginners II class, I once decided to help students learn the names of different foodstuffs in Spanish.

“Tell me what your favorite foods are,” I suggested, “and I will teach you how to say it in Spanish.”

Immediately, students started sharing.

“Chicken!”

“Fried chicken!”

“Chicken tenders!”

“Chicken nuggets!”

“Chicken wings!”

That was when I realized that the activity wasn’t going as planned. Of course, I tried making my own suggestions because there is a limit to how many times you can say “pollo” in a classroom and not get bored. The students didn’t want to discuss anything but chicken, though. Beef and pork were deemed “boring”, rabbit and duck were disgusting, and all the different vegetables I started naming made students make vomiting noises.

People’s palates are woefully undeveloped. This country is the best place ever to explore all the permutations of all the amazing cuisines of the world. You can develop gastronomically as much as you want and not get financially ruined in the process. Yet people choose to eat the same chicken flavored cardboard day in and day out. This is incomprehensible to me.

* There is, however, one place that is worse even than Chick-Fil-A. It’s called “Arby’s.” I visited it once back in Indiana and I still have nightmares.

P.S. I swear to God, if anybody leaves an idiotic comment of the “Everybody should have the right to eat whatever they want” variety, I’ll bite their head off. I’m not proposing constitutional amendments preventing outlawing consumption of garbage. I’m just suggesting that people are limiting their experience of the world for no reason.

There has never been any evidence (and by evidence I mean actual scientific research, not the shrieks of unhinged supporters) that “attachment parenting” produces any sort of positive results for anybody. Now there is evidence that it has a very negative effect on mothers’ mental health:

This study was conducted to provide quantitative data on the relationship between intensive parenting and maternal mental health outcomes including stress, depression, and life satisfaction. The first hypothesis was that endorsing intensive parenting attitudes would result in greater levels of stress and depression and lower levels of life satisfaction. Additionally, as Essentialism focuses on the primacy of the mother to the exclusion of other potential helpers in the family, we expected this scale to be related to lower levels of perceived family social support. The second hypothesis was that the endorsement of intensive parenting attitudes would predict maternal mental health outcomes above and beyond family social support, an already well-known predictor of well-being.

What is especially sad is that self-evident things like “mothers are human beings”, “having a life outside of child-rearing is necessary for maternal well-being”, “there is nothing that makes a mother a more capable parent than a father” still need to be proven by research.

Let’s forget about mothers, though. We are all used to the idea that a mother who doesn’t sacrifice absolutely everything for the sake of the child is a horrible human being. Don’t the children gain a lot from being physically tied all day and every day to a depressed, miserable, socially isolated woman whose relationships with everybody else are crumbling?

So, if intensive mothering is related to so many negative mental health outcomes, why do women do it? They may think that it makes them better mothers, so they are willing to sacrifice their own mental health to enhance their children’s cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes. However, research is needed on child outcomes because, currently, there is not any data to support this assumption. In fact, young children of over-involved or over-protective parents often experi- ence internalizing disorders. In addition, research clearly indicates that the children of women with poor mental health (e.g., depression) are at higher risk for negative outcomes. Given that this study found that aspects of intensive parenting are associated with negative maternal mental health, then intensive parenting may have the opposite effect on children from what parents intend.

Apparently, it remains to be seen just how much children gain from this parenting strategy.

If you can’t get full access to the article, you can find some quotes from it here.