If you know me at all, then you can guess which of these two lunches is mine. 🙂

After a protracted search, N has come up with a name for our future son:

Eric Norbert.

“Eric” is a name he likes phonetically and “Norbert” is the name of some famous mathematician. And they both go with the last name.

A name database says that Eric is a name of somebody who loves travel and adventure and rejects traditions and conventions. I think that’s a great identity to have.

The news reporting is so shoddy and careless that it’s impossible to figure out what really happened. TV newscasts, newspaper and online headlines are all talking about the IRS “targeting” the Tea Party groups. The word “targeting” is supposed to be self-explanatory in this context but it really isn’t.

Were the tax returns of these groups analyzed more closely because of their ideology? Were they audited? If so, then what’s the big deal? Can’t anybody be audited at any time? Do we refer to all cash-business owners and all small-business owners who contract overseas and who get audited a lot more often than anybody else as being “targeted”?

As for these groups’ tax returns being scrutinized, well, if their raison d’etre is to oppose taxes, wouldn’t it be incredibly stupid on the part of the IRS not to see if they put their ideology into practice? If a student rants and raves about plagiarism being a fully respectable practice, who wouldn’t be extra-careful while grading his papers? If a neighbor declares that she doesn’t believe in private property, who wouldn’t hide the wallet whenever she comes by?

As for the government discriminating against people on ideological grounds, that has been happening forever, and nobody seems to care. Just look at a green card or work visa application and its questions about one’s political affiliations. This is a blatant violation of the right of some political parties in the US to have new members come from other countries. And being denied a visa just because you held a party membership card 50 years ago is a little more serious than undergoing a tax audit, which is something we should all be prepared to do anyway.

I also find it curious that people calling themselves “Patriots” have such an issue with proving their patriotism in the most definitive way ever. Waving flags and making speeches is easy. Declaring every cash payment you received and that nobody could have found about had you not declared it – like I did this year – is much harder.

The Tea Party groups could have used this situation to show the kind of maturity they’ve been lacking and that has cost them most of their support. Instead, they have chosen to antagonize every individual who has been audited by the IRS and who has faced the ordeal bravely.

Oh well. They had no future as a political project anyway.

There is just one thing that the Russians have that is better, Ukrainians say. And that thing is. . .

. . . their neighbors!

You can easily adapt this riddle to any other two neighboring nations.

Somebody came to the blog with a search request of “why some people tenure track and some adjunct.”

The answer: dumb luck.

Ukrainians always say that everything Ukrainian is better than everything Russian. Ukrainian gorilka is better than Russian vodka. Ukrainian varenyky* are better than Russian pelmeny. Ukrainian climate is milder than the weather in Russia. Kiev is more beautiful than Moscow. Ukrainian women are more assertive and Ukrainian men are more hard-working. The Ukrainian language is more melodic than Russian.

There is just one thing, Ukrainians say, that the Russians have that is better. What is it that is better in Russia?

* The Poles call them pierogy.

I like all of my student evaluations this semester except one. It says, “The course could be improved by having less readings and more in-class hands-on stuff.”

I’m really curious what we could be putting our hands on in an advanced literature seminar.

I also wonder where people get this bizarre and meaningless verbiage of hands-on, etc.

“Multiculturalism,” Zygmunt Bauman writes in his recent book Culture in a Liquid Modern World, “acts as a socially conservative force. Its achievement is the transformation of social inequality, a phenomenon highly unlikely to win general approval, into the guise of ‘cultural diversity’, that is to say, a phenomenon deserving of universal respect and careful cultivation.”

I always found it fascinating how people convince themselves that the profund dismissiveness and contempt towards other cultures that multiculturalism conceals are somehow progressive. In reality, the result of multi-culturalism is always hatred, animosity, barbarity, and suffering for everybody involved. Except the politicians who advance this concept, of course.

Some people are going completely bonkers with this idea that students need to be policed to prevent them from using technology in the classroom. It has been suggested that we get the students to sign a contract (WTF?) at the beginning of the semester where they would promise not to turn on their cell phones and other devices and would agree to any penalties that will be given to them as a result of breaking this contract.

It has also been suggested that we make the students remove their cell phones and laptops and leave them at the front of the classroom.

What’s next, searching their  pockets and personal belongings before letting them enter the classroom?

And then people wonder why students don’t respect them. You can’t earn respect by acting in such a desperate, pathetic way. You can only earn respect by respecting both the students and yourself.

I especially love it how often my colleagues complain about the students’ immaturity. How can we expect them to act maturely if we treat them like infants?

And you know what I find really confusing? If a person chooses for whatever reason to pay good money to hear your lectures yet decides that updating her Facebook or emailing his friends is more important than getting his or her money’s worth, why should you care? This last semester I had a student who knew she was failing the course from the start yet chose to spend the entire semester staring at her laptop screen. As a result, she failed the course. This was her choice and she is now living with its consequences, which is an important life lesson. Why should I have demeaned myself in front of the entire classroom and turned myself into a nursery teacher just in order to get between this woman and her choice to fail?

P.S. Now a colleague has joined the discussion with a complaint against faculty members who use cell phones during meetings and official ceremonies. I wish people realized that this desire to police the actions of others is nothing but a manifestation of repressed rage.

I finally accessed work email and discovered that my colleagues are eagerly discussing the possibility to create dead zones for the wireless Internet connection in our classrooms.

It is sad to see that people are so incapable of making their teaching interesting enough to compete with Facebook and have to resort to these measures that declare their impotence as educators very openly.

In my own courses, I prefer that the wireless should always be available. Students can look up words in online dictionaries easily, they have no excuse to avoid using synonyms, there is no endless, “I left my dictionary at home, so I can’t discuss the reading.” What’s not to like?

And I’m really not afraid of competing with Twitter and Facebook. I know how to be more  engaging and if I fail, then I will have nobody to blame but myself.