Where are the social services? WTF?

 

I completely agree with the blogger on whose site I found this:

There are people in the world who simply should NOT procreate.

Why do people choose to have several children when they hate them so much? I mean, you try once, you discover that you hate the kid, maybe that’s a clue to stop? And give the one you already have but detest up for adoption.

Stupid animals.

What normal people should do when meeting such freaks is approach them and tell them that they are disgusting, vicious freaks. Of course, the experience wouldn’t even begin to compare with what the child feels when his own parents betray him in this way, but it would be something.  If we collectively spat on child abusers, this would not be happening. The abusers obviously believe that the public will side with them in their bullying of a small kid.

A student submitted homework in my Hispanic Civ course in Spanish, even though the course is taught in English.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just associate you with Spanish, and Spanish words come to me automatically when I’m in your courses.”

I think universities that hire people with PhDs to be adjuncts are stupid. Adjunct positions should be for those who have MAs. Anything else is exploitative and offensive to everybody. How do you even justify having at the same department people with the same qualifications but in wildly different positions? This is just ridiculous.

And the environment this creates must be absolutely horrible. How could I, for instance, come to the department and see a colleague who works in really miserable conditions while being in no way different from me? I would feel so much shame that I would hardly be able to work. It’s like a caste system that is absolutely unreasonable and offensive to human dignity.

We don’t have this idiotic practice where I work, fortunately. And if somebody tries to bring it to our department, we need to resist with all we have.

Throughout my entire life, I visited doctors fewer times than I have in the past 25 weeks.

Did you know that Pet Shop Boys are releasing a new album? This is great news.

I have to say that I’m one of those people who are sorry that the CD format is dead. Music bought from online stores and kept in some cloud somewhere doesn’t seem real. Strangely, I don’t feel the same way about digital books.

So I’m reading a novel titled A Half Forgotten Song by a British author. In the very first pages of the novel,  a divorced woman decides to move to the US to be with her new husband. She takes her 6-year-old daughter with her even though the girl’s father strenuously objects. I find this very confusing because in my country a divorced parent cannot take a child to another country for a 3-day-long trip, let alone to live permanently, without a signed permission from the other parent. Which, of course, is the only civilized way of handling such issues.

My question is: does this issue really work this way in English-speaking countries? OK, the US hasn’t signed the Declaration of the Rights of Children. Kids are considered furniture that can be moved around as much as the owner sees fit. But what about other countries? Is this legal or is the writer I’m reading simply trying to create hype where none is necessary?

A student just informed me that the biggest problem the Spanish Conquistadors had to face in the New World was surviving the harsh, extremely cold winters. A lesser but still serious problem was the difficulty of growing crops in such a bad climate.

Another student wrote in his essay that if the US had invaded a country that had nothing to do with the events of 9/11, that would have been horrible. But the good thing is that this never happened.

I am now wondering if these students are mocking me or being serious.

Since we are having a boy, he is getting N.’s last name. This is what we agreed on at the very beginning of the relationship. If this were a girl, she would get my last name.

N. doesn’t care what last name the kid gets, and the boy is getting his name. Of course, as my Jewish luck would have it, I do care and I lost the gamble.

Yes, I know it’s medieval to care, but if I can’t be honest with readers of my own blog, then where can I confess the truth? This name business matters to me.

Of course, since N. doesn’t care, I could get him to agree to rescind the original agreement. But this is a matter of principle. We cannot be in favor of gender equality only when it suits us. Equality is too important to be discarded whenever it becomes inconvenient.

After we spent two days creating our baby registry, this is what Amazon suggested we add to it:

 

I’m not sure what it is trying to tell us.

It seems like you need a hurricane to interest Americans in having sex.

A funny church service sign about dying atheists.

“Pro-Lifers Don’t Give A Damn About Fetuses. They Only Care About Coercing Women.”

I’m posting this link for the benefit of N. who does not believe me when I say that in this country brutalizing children is not only not considered a crime but is actually something people brag about.

How many animals per year does a vegetarian save?

Some idiot in IHE is arguing that most profs should be fired to lower education costs because. . . this is a strategy that works for IKEA. Apparently, he sees some value in comparing educating people with assembling crappy, ugly, low-quality tables. And this is a professional publication for academics, mind you.

A fascinating journey across Botswana. If you don’t have time to read, the pictures are definitely worth your time. Look at the funny bathroom sign!

Rutgers self-destructs.

“Take oral health, for example. Unless you have perfect genetics, you need intervention during early adolescence to assure long-term oral health. If you don’t get it, you’re doomed to a lifetime of poor oral health, which has consequences elsewhere — on your immune system, on the health of your heart, and can even cause arthritis.”

How can I complain that my students indulge in describing their emotions in minutest details instead of providing an intellectual analysis when my colleagues are similarly incapable of offering anything but a jumbled tale of their emotional travails? See this story of an academic who was denied tenure but fails to discuss what actually happens, delivering, instead, a list of vague references to karma, pain, suffering, and emotion.

David Futrelle is optimistic: “There’s no feminist alive who thinks women shouldn’t be responsible for any of their decisions.” I used to believe that, too. And then a drove of them descended on my blog. So yes, such people exist. Which doesn’t make MRAs any less stupid, of course.

Women aren’t a mystery. And if something possesses you to say we are, here is why you should stop making a fool of yourself.

There are healthy, normal men in the world: “I am not the best person to discuss the subject of abortion as I do not have a uterus or even one fallopian tube, but what I do know is that I have NO right to tell a woman what to do with their bodies.”