“There is starting to be some evidence, though based on very small numbers of patient records, that if people with HIV in the UK reach the age of 60, their life expectancy may actually be starting to exceed the average, possibly because of superior medical monitoring and treatment for people with HIV compared to other older people.”

On happy engagement vs false positives: “Believing in yourself is fine. Earnest exhortations to have a positive attitude, however, are not very useful, because a positive attitude cannot be willed into existence. If crippling negative thoughts are dominating your inner monologue, you cannot just replace them with a different, more positive sort of self talk.”

Oh, the annoying earnestness of the health nuts!

“Sometimes one or another guy in one of my classes hangs around after class and doesn’t say anything but sort of looks sideways at me and I sort of smile at him, encouraging him to ask a question or make a comment or something. But he doesn’t say anything, and I gather my notebooks and walk out; and he follows me for a little, at some distance, and then, rather sadly, goes his way.” This happens to me, too! Students sometimes are unwilling to break the magic of the classroom as soon as the class ends.

Where is the harm in plagiarism?

Why housing co-ops keep failing: “Sadly, in too many cases — and I could cite other disasters but do not wish to get sued — the co-op experiment has all-too-often proven that most people are too busy with their lives to act as effective part-time administrators of something as complicated as running a big apartment building and the results have, as a result, been far from ideal.”

Boards of trustees are like sausages. But not in the good sense.

Masturbation strategies for women. When I was younger, I would get together with female friends, we would watch movies with female masturbation scenes filmed by clueless men, and laugh our heads off. This is why I believe this post might be very helpful for many people.

Trying to scare people with the terrifying word “Liberal.” Ooh, I’m shaking in my purple furry slippers.

“Either men have the benefit of the doubt that children just might be safe around them as they answer that call (or benefit of the doubt that children just might be safe around men that make  comments in passing) or we continue on this path of damning any man that happens to be in the presence of a child.”

Is there anything more ridiculous than ethics courses in business school?

Plagiarism fallacies. I have no idea why so many people defend plagiarism. Avoiding plagiarism is extremely easy: you simply have to avoid any intellectual sloppiness and you will never become a plagiarist.

“Oral contraceptives (OCs) should be sold over the counter (OTC) in drugstores without a doctor’s prescription, according to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (The College). Easier access to OCs should help lower the nation’s high unintended pregnancy rate, a rate that has not changed over the past 20 years and costs taxpayers an estimated $11.1 billion annually.” Finally!

Disgusting advertisement from Best Friends Animal Society. What is it with the pro-animal organizations that they invariably turn to promoting sexism?

– After underlining hundreds of mistakes in each of the essays my independent researchers handed in,

– after writing endless messages saying that, “I will not accept your work until it is written by you and not by Google Translate,”

– after being driven to tears by the disastrous writing, shoddy argumentation, and incapacity to conduct independent research,

– after explaining time and again what constitutes a reliable academic source of information only to have an IMDb review cited at me,

– after reading things like, “Of course, the Spanish conquistadors killed many indigenous people, but there was a positive side to the conquest, too, because the Spaniards brought good things like weapons and horses to the New World”, “When Columbus first arrived in Latin America. . .” and “After the people of Spain took Franco down. . .”,

– after spending 80% of my office hours this semester going over the same mistakes in the essays that I already know by heart,

– after having nightmares that I will have to correct 260 mistakes in a single essay once again. . .

. . . I have finally received very good final versions of the essays with good research, original analysis, careful bibliographies and almost no mistakes from all independent researchers but one.

I’ve been grading non-stop, 10-12 hours a day, since Monday. I now can barely lift my right arm because of all the mouse-button pressing. But it is all worth it because I have taught several people to do research and write well in Spanish.

I will now be booking multiple appointments with a massage therapist.

Guardian – what a stupid, obnoxious rag, people – published yet another idiotic, alarmist post. It is titled “Why is feminism such a tough badge to wear?”

To answer the brainless journalist’s stupid question: there is absolutely nothing “tough” about calling yourself a feminist. I have always identified as a feminist in a very vocal and insistent way. It cost me zero problems in my personal and professional life. To the contrary, it brought me and my husband together. The idea that, in this day and age, anybody but a complete country bumpkin who hasn’t been away from the pig farm in decades sees feminists as “man-haters” is ridiculous. Is the article’s author living in the same century as I am?

As for this boring old canard that students don’t raise their hands to identify as feminists when asked to because feminism scares them, it is promoted by people who are not educators. Before belly-aching about how this experiment proves something, I suggest the fool who considers herself such a specialist on student behavior try asking the class a few other questions. Then she will realize that it is next to impossible to get students to identify publicly as anything. Unlike this brainless piece of fluff, I have actually conducted this experiment. Students refuse to raise their hands when asked who among them plays video games, watches television, likes reality TV shows, shops online, has a credit card, and has breakfast. This does not mean that being a breakfast eater is “a tough badge to wear.” Students are reluctant to raise their hands because they are afraid that doing so might end up in them being put on the spot and asked to explain something or speak publicly.

I remember a prof of mine suddenly asking whether anybody in the class was married or divorced. I was divorced but I didn’t raise my hand. I didn’t know why he was asking and saw no reason to respond. I figured it would do nothing for my participation grade, so why bother?

In order to get students to discuss anything whatsoever (and especially getting them to say something in the first person), you need to work like an animal to create a special environment and a special kind of relationships within the group where that will be possible. Otherwise, any question starting with “are you. . .” or “do you. . .” will be answered with a deafening and slightly contemptuous silence.

Guardian has sunk low, indeed, if it asks some completely unintelligent loser with miserable writing skills whose entire system of beliefs is based on Google searches and Legally Blonde to contribute a post on feminism. Am I mistaken or is Guardian the UK version of The New York Times?

 

Happy Birthday, my dear sweet little girl. Your Auntie loves you very much and will come to see you very very soon. You are the most wonderful, brilliant, and beautiful little girl in the world.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

I never heard about Alton Brown before but his turkey recipe is absolutely sensational. I made the best turkey of my life yesterday. Highly recommended, folks. The meat is so aromatic that you just want to sit there and inhale it.

Can you guess what is being advertised in this Russian ad? If you are a Russian speaker, don’t spoil the fun for everybody else.

 

The good news is that the ad was pulled because it was recognized to be offensive. This is a great step forward for Russia where ads are notoriously icky.

Of course, it’s good to see students try to engage in literary criticism but the initial attempts at providing readings of their own are very clumsy.

“The characters in the short story are very happy,” a student writes. “Their joy symbolizes the happiness that the people of Spain felt when dictator Francisco Franco died.”

Of course, the story was written decades before Franco died, but who cares about a small detail like that?

“The protagonist’s paralysis stands for the paralyzed state of the Spanish economy after the global economic crisis of 2008.”

Yes, a paralyzed boy in 1961 totally embodies the economy in 2008.

If you want to spice up your day with a spot of righteous indignation, see this egregiously idiotic article that claims we should stop assigning term papers to our students. Instead, the article’s idiot of an author suggests that we should get students to write book reports. Generating original arguments is a waste of time, this clown says. Instead – just get this! – students should summarize the contents of books. We are talking about university students, not third-graders.

And just to think that this lazy freak has a job while so many bright, talented academics can’t get employed.

It’s always very entertaining how people are willing to blame anything but themselves for their failures. If you can’t make a term paper work and deliver something of value to your students, the concept of a term paper must be to blame. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s take this argument even further. If you can’t get your students to write good English (Spanish, Arabic, German, etc.), something must be wrong with the language. But never with you.

So how are you doing the turkey? Or are you doing it?

I’m doing mine in brine, following this recipe but making it a lot more complicated. And there will also be my trademark blini-caviar-smoked salmon cake.

I’m forced to buy these small turkeys that only weigh 14 lbs for the moment but I dream of getting to cook a huge, enormous bird one day.