As we suffer from crippling budget cuts, a post-doc “researcher” in Ottawa has given the press sensational material that proves. . . brace yourselves for the completely break-through information the world has been dying to discover:

But wait, this is not all! There is also an article to accompany this crucial scientific achievement. The article attaches some completely cuckoo evolutionary explanation to this discovery of the month. As we all know, evo psych blabber is the ultimate refuge of those with nothing whatsoever to say.

If this passes for science nowadays, then I’m sad.

If you are trying really really hard to achieve something and it doesn’t work out, stop and ask yourself: “What scares me so much about succeeding at this?”

I never knew how to answer the question that the Israelis I know often ask, “Do you expect us to relinquish the Wall to the Palestinians?”

I now know the answer:

Israeli police on Thursday detained five women at a Jerusalem holy site for performing religious rituals that ultra-Orthodox Jews say are reserved for men. . . The Western Wall, the only remaining part of the biblical Temple compound, is the holiest site where Jews can pray. It is currently divided into men’s and women’s sections. Orthodox rabbis, who control Israel’s religious institutions, oppose mixed-gender prayers. In recent months, female worshippers have been detained at the site for wearing religious garments and leading prayers.

Yes, I’d rather the Wall were relinquished or even razed to the ground than to see it befouled by this atrocious woman-hatred. Shame on you, fellow Jews. Shame on you.

If this becomes even more wide-spread, the only reason to support Israel will evaporate.

A question for fellow scholars in the Humanities: how many copies do university presses and academic publishers usually publish of each title? What is a regular print run?

I always know that my Birthday is coming when I see this. Of course, it has to fall on the most difficult and busy time of the academic year. I’m planning to eat an enormous steak for my Birthday. I haven’t had one in nearly a year, I believe.

The widespread glee over Thatcher’s death seemingly serves no practical purpose. She hadn’t been in power for a long time, so why would strangers care whether she is alive (and living as a recluse as a result of her illness) or dead?

There is, of course, a reason why people explode in celebration as a result of Thatcher’s death. For them, she symbolizes the punishing, distant, cold Mommy who wasn’t nurturing enough and who kept rejecting them. Today’s joy is their way of repudiating the symbolic Mother.

I’m sure you’ve heard how the Soviet people wept collectively for a week when Stalin died. This isn’t a myth. They really cried and felt desperate. This happened because Stalin was a symbolic Father for them. A protective, strict, overbearing Daddy who took away the people’s freedom to act (and what freedom can little children expect to have, anyway?) and in return assumed every responsibility. Given that he died during the time when many people were fatherless as a result of WWII, this felt like being orphaned twice. First, the biological father died, and now the real father was gone, too.

I find it fascinating what this emotional outburst over Thatcher’s death tells us about the culture(s) that experience it. Since people who are celebrating are quite advanced in age, this rage against the Mother who had the gall to refuse to nurture them is a sign of one thing and one thing only: immaturity. There are many grievously immature people around us.

N.B. for new readers: On this blog, we discuss things in a way that is more profound than “People celebrate her death because they didn’t like her policies.” I don’t like Bush Jr.’s policies. I detested him while he was in power. But I can’t even begin to imagine getting emotionally involved with his life or death now that he is out of power. Intellectualizing emotions is a childish defense. Welcome to the blog!

To offset the budget cuts to our university, the administration is discussing the possibility of increasing the teaching loads of people who are not active in research.

I don’t even want to imagine the kind of intolerable environment this will create in the departments, especially the small ones.

The problem is that I recently realized that I want to work at this university forever because I love it. Yes, the region is sucky, and the climate is shit, and the state is among the most broke in the country, and the dog obsession is even worse than the driving obsession, and it’s extremely hard to find tolerable food or a place to walk.

But I love the university. And love cannot be explained. It happens on a level that stands above reason.

This is not the first time I love a university. I loved McGill before. But it has been destroyed, and now there are no more Hispanic Studies at McGill. The university has repeated the story of the Roman Empire in miniature.

It’s like you keep falling in love but the people you love keep dying.

Why is it that whenever the Russians make fools of themselves, Ukrainians have to prove they are even bigger idiots? Right after Putin made himself the butt of every joke with the homophobic speech he gave in Holland, Ukrainian pseudo-feminists showed that they are even stupider than he is:

I still can’t decide what pains me more, that these clowns call themselves Ukrainians or that they call themselves feminists. Even the jerkwad of Putin looked good by their side.

I will be celebrating the 15th anniversary of my emigration this summer, and I still can’t get over how great of a decision that was. I don’t have a place in a country where this idiocy passes for feminism.

Another student just slaughtered:

Riera’s protagonist is part of Barcelona’s aristocracy. We know she belongs to the upper class because she grows fat. If she has money to buy so much food as to get fat, she has to be from a very rich family.

An American student from the Midwest writing this is . . . I don’t know, words fail me right now. Where do they get this stuff?

“We’re not going to have the White House forever, folks. If he doesn’t do this, Paul Ryan is going to do it for us in a few years,” said a longtime Obama aide, referring to the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate who proposed a sweeping overhaul of Medicare that would replace some benefits with vouchers.

Translation: “We, the Democrats, are sad little wusses who are terrified of having won the White House. We can’t wait for the Republicans to take it away for us. In the meanwhile, we will tell our voters to shove all of our promises to them made during the campaign. Instead, we will start doing everything the Republicans would have done had they been elected. Because we don’t think we deserve to win and we don’t really believe in our own ideas. We simply repeat them to make the perennially stupid progressives in this country think that they have a party to represent them.”

If you make such pathetic little pronouncements 3 months into a new term, then you definitely won’t have the White House forever.

The political scene in this country is so impoverished that it makes me want to barf. There is hardly anybody but liars, illiterates, and whiny weaklings.