This was the view from our Marco Island hotel room. I miss our short holiday!

Now I will have to work like crazy to finish everything before August 1. That’s when I will stop working and will do nothing whatsoever in preparation for my C-section.

It physically hurts me to see trees destroyed like this. Each tree is precious in our climate.

The corpses of trees have been lying around since last Friday’s tornado.

Evo psych profs are truly something special:

 

It’s very embarrassing to see somebody who is supposed to have some sort of education to discuss both weight and dissertation writing in terms of “willpower.” Poor freak.

I want to acquaint you with a blog post that will make it clear why I shun North American feminist theory, avoid North American feminist blogs as much as I can, and hide in the toilet whenever I see people from our university’s Gender Studies program.

The blogger in question addresses some really idiotic comments made by some aging freakazoid:

Does parenthood imperil the skills of a money trader? Apparently it does. Only, however, if the trader is female.

That’s the take of Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire who made his money as a hedge fund manager, in this comment while speaking to prospective hedge-funders at the University of Virginia: “Jones said in his experience having a child is a ‘killer’ for any desire to trade, adding ‘as soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it,’ while motioning to his chest, according to a video posted by the Washington Post.”

Obviously, a person whose parents hated him enough to give him a name that contains both “Tudor” and “Jones” had little chance of growing up normal and psychologically healthy. Yet, since Tudor is now an adult, his mental issues become his own responsibility and it is up to him to make sure that he doesn’t dump his psychological dirt on other human beings.

The linked blogger gives Tudor a proper dressing down, pointing out how ridiculous his generalizations about the nature of women are. I really enjoyed the post because it was funny, well-written, and intelligent. That is, I enjoyed it until I arrived at the closing paragraphs:

Recent studies have proven women to be better traders and money handlers, less inclined to take dire risks, more able to render profit to their clients. Perhaps they regard the money in their accounts as their “baby”, thus deserving of nurturing care? It’s a skill and approach many males could learn and profit from.

In response to offensive generalizations about women’s nature, the blogger thinks it is appropriate to offer a string of . . . offensive generalizations about women’s nature that in no way contradict Tudor Jones’s opinions.

I have had to read quite a lot of feminist theory for work and I can assure you that no patriarchal fundamentalist can emit as many essentialist statements about the nurturing nature of women and the 100% different nature of men as a regular American feminist. Many people have this completely pig-headed belief that feminism is about taking up the old essentialist generalizations about “men” and “women” and affixing the label “bad” to the former and “good” to the latter. This is the habit of lazy minds that can’t escape the comforting reliance on familiar binaries. Nothing more complex than “bad” and “good” is accessible to them.

The flurry of articles on Israeli soldiers posing nude and posting the photos online obscures from view the real tragedy. Namely, that young men and women are forced to kill their brothers and sisters to defend stupid nationalistic slogans invented by arm-chair politicians. What makes this situation even more bizarre, this tragic sacrifice of Jewish children is carried out in the name of making the Jews safe.

It is not surprising, though. Nationalism appeals to emotions and is incapable of withstanding an analysis from the point of view of reason and logic. People drive themselves into a frenzy of nationalistic fervor because if they stop vociferating for a second, the entire edifice of their nationalistic convictions will crack and collapse.

So we just heard that the state legislature will not be cutting a single dime of our funding. To the contrary, we will be getting extra money for a variety of projects we have underway.

I now solemnly swear never again to waste a second of my life participating in the favorite American pastime of “Apocalypse is starting right now; we will all die a painful horrible death immediately.”  I’m sorry, folks, I understand that this is an activity this culture enjoys passionately, but I’m not going to Americanize myself in that direction. From now on, worst-case scenarios should be savored outside of my presence.

First, people drive themselves to distraction with all these drama-queenish slogans of “academia is dying!”, “scholarship is becoming extinct!”, “nobody will ever get any jobs in any industry ever!”, “we will all be driven into prostitution, misery, and starvation!”, “humanity is doomed!” and then they guzzle anti-depressants like vacuum-cleaners. And the really hilarious thing is that these are usually the same people who ridicule the cheap masochism of Shades of Grey. Anastasia Steele at least gets to climax as a result of her masochistic fantasies. What do the regular drama queens get out of all their doom and gloom?

Please, folks, if I ever allow myself to slide into apocalyptic thinking once again, do give me the link to this post.