On the subject of accents, I wanted to share what happened at the departmental outing we had today. My colleagues and I went to the best restaurant in town to celebrate the end of the semester. The waitress who served us is Mexican. She heard us speak Spanish and started guessing where everybody is from based on our accents.

“Mexican, Venezuelan, Brazilian, another Venezuelan or maybe Colombian. . .”

“So where am I from?” the colleague from Spain asked.

“Oh, you are a gringa,” the waitress answered immediately.

So yesterday I left my house, got into a car, drove it around the neighborhood, drove to the gas station, came back home, and parked the car in the lot next to the house. The neighborhood dogs, cats, squirrels, and deer* remain unharmed.

Of course, my blood pressure was through the roof and I was shaking spasmodically. But I’ve only had 16 hours behind the wheel, and people keep telling me it gets better.

* We have a herd of deer living in a small vale around the corner.

A student handed in an assignment with responses copy-pasted from Wikipedia. This wouldn’t be breaking news if it weren’t for how badly the copy-pasting was done. If knowing how to plagiarize well were a gradable skill, he would have gotten an F for it. One would think that even if a person copy-pastes a text of which he doesn’t understand a single word, he could still make sure he copy-pasted complete sentences.

I can imagine myself offering classes in copy-pasting in the near future.

“See these dots that appear in the text at regular intervals?” I will ask. “They are called “periods” or “full stops.” The bits of text that appear between the periods are called sentences. When you want to cheat on an assignment, you need to select the part of the plagiarized text that appears between these dots. Don’t just copy-paste a random part of text if you want what you are submitting not to look completely insane.”

For those of you who speak Spanish, this is what the student handed in to me:

siendo inocente al igual que el personaje. Cuanto más se aproxima al final de la novela y el cuento respectivamente, ambos lectores presienten que sucederá algo terrible. En el último párrafo el lector-personaje se convierte en víctima y el lector real se vuelve culpable por imaginar la muerte del personaje. La falta de cierre del cuento por no haber quien lea la novela hace que el final desaparezca, evidenciando la culpa del lector real, quien se ha vuelto victimario o cómplice de la muerte del personaje a la vez que observa

This was a response to “Analyze the title of the short story.”

A student sent me an email expressing a hope that failing to show up for the oral exam and the final as well as missing the last 7 weeks of class “will not hinder the final grade.”

No, none of this will hinder the failing grade from being entered into the system.

A rich teenager in Texas kills four people and the judge sentences him to probation.

The defense argued that he was victimized by being wealthy and should not serve time in jail for killing people. The judge agreed. No, seriously.

Courtesy of Jennifer Armstrong, here is a brilliant video of a tenacious Russian crow (this isn’t a metaphor, the video features an actual Russian crow):

I just read the funniest article ever. A journalist criticizes the terror or rest and enjoyment and makes some very good points:

Recently, I saw a man on the Tube wearing a Nike T-shirt with a slogan that read, in its entirety, “I’m doing work”. The idea that playing sport or doing exercise needs to be justified by calling it a species of work illustrates the colonisation of everyday life by the devotion to toil.

Marriage is hard work, you did a good job tying your shoe-laces, we need to work on our relationship, parenting is the hardest job in the world – all these expressions imply that an activity, no matter how lofty or trivial, needs to be classified as “work” or “job” if it is to have any value or dignity whatsoever. If something isn’t a job, then it might turn out to be fun and enjoyable. And one will certainly die of guilt if it turns out that s/he is simply enjoying life.

Sadly, an article that starts so well soon gets caught in a web of its own internal contradictions. The author criticizes productivity apps and time management tools for. . . preventing people from doing something useful:

The paradox of the autodidactic productivity industry of GTD, Lifehacker and the endless reviews of obscure mind-mapping or task-management apps is that it is all too easy to spend one’s time researching how to acquire the perfect set of productivity tools and strategies without ever actually settling down to do something.

It is strange to see a condemnation of useless loafing in an article that sets out to praise useless loafing. Instead of feeling encouraged by the inventiveness of people who can use even productivity apps to have some unproductive, mindless fun, this author criticizes such folks for not being productive every second of every day.

The conclusion to this article about the evils of endless toil and soul-crushing daily grind of capitalist societies is the following:

Perhaps I shouldn’t mock. All that time saved every morning by knowing the exact location of the baseball cap you want to wear will surely add up, earning you hours more freedom to hunt and hoard ever more productivity tips, until you are a purely theoretical master at doing nothing of value in the most efficient way imaginable.

People shouldn’t have silly, unproductive hobbies and should avoid “doing nothing of value” because that makes them ridiculous, the author suggests. The most hilarious thing about this piece is that its author is entirely oblivious to the inconsistency of his approach towards the relentless drive towards 100% productivity. On the one hand, he seems to abhor it but, at the same time, seeing people lounge about causes profound existential angst that makes him contradict his own argument.

The profound and painful struggles of American feminists. If you want to read about REAL oppression, read this.

Weirdness at a comics company. No wonder that today’s comics suck so badly.

“[The authors] suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.” OK, you either do science or believe in intelligent design. The two just don’t mix. This probably explains the idiocy of the “study.”

A great post IN RUSSIAN about the idiocy of the Russians’ reaction to events in Ukraine.

I wasn’t sure if this controversial blogger in Montreal was a mentally disturbed person or an anti-Semite. And then I read the last sentence of the linked article and knew the answer.

I don’t watch the show discussed in this post but I’m fascinated by the endless discussion of how the show is bad because it doesn’t live up to the viewers very bizarre ideological expectations.

“Bad students at my state school got Fs. Bad students at elite institutions just might be reprimanded with a C+. Might.” That’s my experience, too. Nobody wants to expose oneself to the wrath of the parents. Since parents never come close to a state school, one has more freedom in how one teaches.

Feministe’s founder renounces reproductive rights and channels Sarah Palin. Stand up if you are surprised.

“I’ve experienced this in my own courses on race and gender. No matter how gently or empirically a notion is introduced, many Americans are not used to discussing race (they’re more accustomed to discussing gender). Many people equate a discussion on race to being racist, or a discussion on gender to equate to accusations of misogyny. And if students feel they are being called racist, they immediately put up a wall or feel threatened. And routinely, if someone feels threatened, they stop learning.” At least, I’m not the only person who has this problem.

“Research on women’s sexual desires (as opposed to their behavior) reveals the female libido to be, in the words of author Daniel Bergner, “omnivorous.” While women may not admit it to researchers or even acknowledge it to themselves, we’re basically turned on by everything.”

This is something all academics need to do to preserve the integrity of teaching.

“Many people nowadays are mistakenly of the opinion that the use of “Xmas” is a recent invention or a secular attempt to remove the religious tradition from Christmas by taking the “Christ” out of “Christmas. The practice of using contractions for divine or sacred names (nomina sacrum) started sometime in the 1st Century AD although the exact date remains unknown.”

It is unbelievable that such absolutely disgusting, vicious laws would be adopted in Canada.

A very good, detailed post on how to live with an autistic roommate.

The cost savings of food stamps cuts versus the cost increases of diabetes care.

“Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage is continuing his push to loosen the state’s child labor laws, arguing that 12-year-old children should not be restricted from working and learning life skills.” And the little bastards shouldn’t have more gruel either.

My favorite Euroblogger experiences American Thanksgiving.

“This morning several dozen students at the University of Edinburgh stormed the offices of the university’s finance director demanding an increase in staff wages and a cap of high-ranking administrators’ salaries at ten times the pay of the university’s lowest-paid employees.” I really admire these students. Why are our students snoozing in utter passivity?

It turns out that the story about living in poverty that went viral a while ago was really written by a rich person. The good rule of thumb to discover fake articles is this: the more touching and poignant it is, the more fake it will invariably turn out to be.

And the post of the week is this beautiful post about teaching written by a teacher.

To those who pee themselves with delight over Pope Francis’s saccharine and hypocritical pronouncements: you are funny. Here is why.

Of course, one of the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church made an official statement today saying that single mothers should be referred to exclusively as cunts. He should take lessons in PR and diplomacy from Pope Francis.

At least, this particular church leader is not getting on the cover of Times as the person of the year.