One third of my new article is already done. It seems like it’s getting written very fast but the reason is that I have done so much research and preparation that now it practically writes itself.

The original plan was to submit it before April 15 but now it seems like I might do it two weeks ahead of schedule. If I submit one article before the end of the spring semester and then one more before August 1, I will be doing very well for the year. Then, the Fall can be spent in introducing changes if journals request them.

I have no idea why it took me so long to realize that it is crucial to have this kind of a plan in order to avoid flailing around like a fish in a toilet tank.

These students are going to drive me nuts! Now one of them has decided that “read the novel you will be analyzing” means “find some half-assed, abbreviated, error-ridden translation of the novel online and waste a month reading it.”

No matter how many lists of possible fuck-ups I amass and warn the students about on the first day of class, there is always some bizarre way of going about things that they manage to invent.

I have noticed that the resistance to visiting a library is so huge that students prefer to download some crap from the Internet, pay significant amounts of money to Amazon for sending them books they later discover they don’t need, anything to avoid going to the library and simply checking out the book they need. This is a sad mystery.

A student wants to use a publication by Cato Institute in his research. Should I allow this? Is it a legitimate academic source?

I remember hearing that they are a non-academic think-tank that is heavily subsidized by lobbyist organizations. Am I right or am I confusing them with somebody?

Wow, this is an academic I really admire:

The Tel Aviv University business school on Monday told its undergraduate students to get their degrees in other academic disciplines rather than business. . .

Ellis said in his email that the business school recommends undecided undergraduate students choose disciplines like pure sciences, math, economics, psychology, computer science, history, literature, philosophy and architecture.

“Study of academic disciplines prepares students to think scientifically in these fields and form the foundation for advanced studies in graduate degree programs,” he said.

But wait, there is more. Brave, honest professors at Tel Aviv U say openly what so many of us have wanted to say for a long time but never dared to:

In TheMarker magazine article by Tali Heruti-Sover, Tviran was quoted as saying business administration should only be studied at the graduate level and that an undergraduate degree in business is unnecessary. “Business administration is an excellent degree but needs to be studied at the appropriate time,” he said.

This is so true, and finally somebody is admitting it. Undergraduate degrees in business are a joke because they turn universities into vocational training schools. In order to conceal from the students how lacking in substance these programs are, professors and administrators fill their heads with pipe dreams about the untold riches that await them the moment they graduate. My sister (who is a job recruiter) says nobody has more inflated and unreasonable expectations than these kids. In reality, nobody can learn how to run a successful business while sitting behind a desk.

The reasons why universities keep deluding their students on this account are clear:

Ellis said, “Unfortunately for us and many of the world’s leading universities, there are open and hidden pressures to serve as institutions for professional training. The MBA was first founded to train graduates of disciplines who already had practical work experience in their professional or scientific fields for administrative positions.

Later, over the protests of many professors, undergraduate programs were also opened. At first, such programs were established at colleges, and the universities were left with no choice but to open management programs from fear of losing good students who are very interested in this field.”

As a result, universities turn into vocational schools that offer useless training for non-existent vocations.

Here is what Tel Aviv U is doing to preserve its integrity:

He continued, “As opposed to other colleges and universities, our senate approved the study of management only when combined with an academic discipline to retain the scientific character of undergraduate studies. For this reason it also barred combining management study with accounting, which isn’t recognized as an academic discipline.”

This is an example we should all follow.

What would you think about a professor who specializes in the French literature of the 1920s and 1930s but never read a line by Balzac and has a very vague idea of who he is?

What would you think about a professor who specializes in the Russian modernist poetry but never read a line by Tolstoy and says things like, “Could you tell me what the deal on that Tolstoy fellow is? What did he write about?”?

What would you think about a professor who specializes in James Joyce but never read a line by Dickens or Hardy?

I know somebody like that in my field. This person is a Peninsularist who has never read anything by Galdós and is not sure how to pronounce his name.

That isn’t what I find really curious, though. I also don’t find it surprising that this person was given a very prestigious job fresh out of grad school on the strength of very poor Spanish and zero publications. Neither am I shocked that this person – who still hasn’t published a word anywhere on this planet – is about to get tenure at a very good school. (I know who this person’s Daddy is, so nothing surprises me.)

What I do find incomprehensible is how this individual – who is very very limited intellectually, is not well-read, is not doing any interesting research, is hated by students for teaching in a boring and uninspired way – has managed to convince absolutely everybody in sight that s/he is a rising star of contemporary Hispanism.

“Oh, so you know JJ, right?” people keep asking me. “JJ is such a star! The future of our field belongs to JJ. There is just no competing with somebody so brilliant. I only wish I were as good at research as JJ.”

It seems like wherever I go, I encounter a bunch of folks ready to gush about the Zero-Publications JJ. Of course, JJ keeps announcing that something super impressive is about to be published but 5,5 years after getting a PhD, you either have a record of publications or you don’t.

“Ah, you just wait and see!” somebody told me the other day. “JJ is writing this really break-through piece right now. You might want to hold off on submitting your article on the same writer. It might be of real help to you to see what JJ has to say about him.” The word “JJ” was pronounced with the veneration one normally reserves for luminaries who have had a huge impact on the field.

Of course, I;m not holding off on submitting my article because I do want it to appear in print before the end of this millenium.

I find it fascinating how people manage to create a certain image of themselves and then get everybody to believe it. I have no doubt that JJ’s admirers are being completely sincere. I just can’t figure out what drives them to stick to this vision of JJ, all evidence that JJ is a flake notwithstanding.

I should stop watching these Russian TV shows because they traumatize me. I just watched one where mothers of 35-year-old men discovered their children had been swapped at the hospital where they were born and they had raised other people’s children. Imagine how these poor families must feel. Poor parents. And the men themselves who have been deprived of their real families for so many years!

This is too horrible.

The only piece of good news is that nowadays there are DNA tests that allow people to establish true paternity. What a great invention of humanity!

. . . was left by Andrea:

Something just occurred to me: the act of putting kids at a smaller, separate “children’s table” and feeding them subpar food instead of what all the grownups are eating is just what we do to pets. People more and more are treating their kids the way they treat their dogs — as something to be fed the minimum nutritional requirements, to be relegated to being fobbed off to a corner away from the activity, to be produced when there’s a need to brag that you have something cute to pet, to be paraded about like an object, and to be talked down to in a simplistic tone. In other words, a child is just a primitive, barely living being that is an ornament to an adult’s life, not a person in their own right.

I think this is a brilliant insight. I haven’t looked at the issue this way but this makes total sense. Chicken nuggets even look like oversized dog food.

Thank you for the great comment, Andrea!

My blogroll is populated with Scrooges who are publishing endless (and endlessly boring) posts about why Valentine’s Day is bad and should not be celebrated.

I think this is simply stupid. I love this holiday. I love all holidays and even remotely festive occasions. I celebrated Valentine’s Day when I was single just as well as I celebrate it when I’m not. Who cares what other people make it about, what the marketing companies want it to be about, what it was like 100 years ago, or anything of the kind? A holiday is what one makes of it.

I especially detest those passive-aggressive losers who are too chicken to tell their partner, “I don’t like you and don’t find you valuable” and who instead say, “I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day on ideological grounds, so don’t expect a gift.”

And the idiots who say crap like, “We love each other every day, so what’s the need to have a special day to celebrate it?” should first apply this line of reasoning to their own Birthdays. I mean, if you are alive every day, then what’s the point of celebrating your life once a year? If we follow this inane logic, there is no reason to celebrate anything ever.

Graduation? Well, shouldn’t the process of acquiring knowledge be more important than the day you get an empty diploma cover?

New Year’s? Why should an arbitrary number be celebrated as if it meant anything special?

Wedding anniversary? Marriage is hard work, so why celebrate the day when you accepted yet another job that will not even be remunerated?

Christmas? That’s all commercial anyways, and besides, Jesus wasn’t even born on that day. He was never born at all, and that is a great reason to deny oneself a chance to have a good time. Let’s punish Jesus for never getting born and have a crappy time instead of enjoying ourselves!

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks! Let’s celebrate the people and the things we love today. If there is nothing else to celebrate, I suggest we celebrate our love for this blog. 🙂

P.S. We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day by going to the theater to see Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and then to a Peruvian restaurant. That will happen on Saturday because N. has an important presentation tomorrow, so he’s preparing. I will tell you all about the play and the food, of course.

 

Only very weird kids brought up by lazy irresponsible people would prefer the garbage in the bottom picture to the beautiful food in the picture on top. When I was a kid, only extreme hunger would have forced me to eat the goat droppings in the bottom photo. And then I would have thrown up anyway. But I would give a lot to be offered the beautiful plate of food on top.

The reason why kids choose the garbage on the bottom is because their parents are too lazy to make anything good for them and get them accustomed to ingesting crap. And then everybody sits there super-puzzled why 60% of children in this country are obese.

These kids are like orphans who are rescued from horrible orphanages in Romania and Serbia and cannot fall asleep in good, comfortable beds. Instead, they crawl into small, dirty spaces. Because that is all they know.

So please stop repeating like broken records that kids like to eat this shit. Sick kids like to eat this shit. Healthy kids wouldn’t touch it. Nobody knows what foods are good, healthy and nutritional better than small kids. You need to work long and hard to break these natural mechanisms of food selection.

I found the images here.