We’ve done the easy exercises of this challenge, but now a really difficult assignment is coming up. Prepare yourselves, my friends! This will be brutal. This week’s challenge is:

ENJOYING BEAUTY

Every day of this week you must do an activity while being naked. It doesn’t matter what activity it is but it should be something you normally don’t do naked. For instance, if you brush your teeth in your underwear, do it naked. But if you do that while naked already, then do something else.

By the way, sexologists often give this exercise to people who suffer from anorgasmy: the patients are asked to spend an hour each day completely naked. And the results are miraculous.

I’m not asking for an entire hour, just a single activity. And, of course, I’m not asking anybody to do it publicly.

Just try it, OK? It’s scary at first but then the revealing becomes revelational.

Fareed Zakaria was talking to a Polish diplomat.

“Will Ukraine ever manage to become an independent country?” he asked.

The diplomatic Pole tried not to look as appalled as he obviously felt.

“Erm. Ukraine IS an independent country,” he said. “And has been one since 1991.”

“Yeah, but I mean, you know, many people in Russia believe that Ukraine is a part of Russia. I mean, Putin must definitely think that, right?”

The Pole looked desperate and tried to explain about the Budapest accords, but the journalist was obviously bored with all these unexciting facts and wanted to return to his fantasies about the thought processes of Putin.

I keep complaining that students and fellow bloggers keep trying to reduce the world’s complexity to their very limited experience and knowledge. But this is what’s offered everywhere in lieu of analysis, so how are they to know any better?

At the gym today I saw a discussion of Ukraine on CNN, and it was just sad. First of all, the closest thing to a Ukrainian that CNN could find in this enormous country was Kristoff whose father stood next to some Ukrainians back in the 1940s. There was also a woman who wrote a book about the Arab Spring because that’s “just like” what is happening in Ukraine. This woman informed the audience that “if you take the most chauvinistic Texan you can imagine and add 5,000 years you’ll get an Iranian.” I think this is insulting to both Iranians and Texans, but this is what passes for insight on the CNN.

Then there was some fellow called Remnick or Resnick who said that “Putin came to power 2 years ago when there were hundreds of thousands if people protesting in defense of gay rights. Or human rights. Of which, of course, gay rights are a huge part.”

This is absolutely ridiculous because the 2011-12 protests in Russia were decidedly not in favor of gay rights. There was a tiny group of people who raised the rainbow flag but they were immediately vilified by the protesters and blamed for sabotaging the protests. Anybody who thinks that those protests in Russia were defending gay rights or revolved around the concept of human rights is just ridiculously unaware of what’s going on.

The journalist who directed the discussion repeated, “But isn’t this just like. . .” so many times that it was scary.

People, why is it so hard to accept that one’s experience is not completely exhaustive and that things might conceivably happen somewhere in the world that are not “just like” something you have already seen or heard about?

On Thursday, we were talking in class about the drug wars in Mexico and I told the students, “So tomorrow or the day after El Chapo Guzman (leader of the Sinaloa cartel) will be arrested. So what? What will that change?”

The day after, El Chapo Guzman was, indeed, arrested.

People who know nothing about education or the job market keep trying to come up with ways to improve both:

Colleges could take things further. Why not allow students to use their scores on these or similar tests in job applications? A national college testing system would level the playing field in the job market and could help students at lesser-known schools prove themselves based on what they know rather than where they went to school.

Employers don’t care about grades. I can’t imagine anybody making anything but the worst possible impression by saying during a job interview, “And by the way, I got an A on a test.” I always tell my students that the moment they march across the stage to get their diplomas, grades should disappear from their radar forever. Even if they have been accepted to grad school, nothing ever again will be about grades.

Recruiters will correct me if I’m wrong, but I can think of no better way to make oneself look unprofessional and childish than by mentioning grades and tests during job interviews.

If an employer wants to know how well my school, for instance, teaches students to speak Spanish, the most logical way to find out is to speak the language to them, not ask about some idiotic test score that means absolutely nothing.

We need to stop infantilizing Millenials, folks, or we all will pay through the nose for this mistake.

P.S. By the way, I was desperate enough to interview with Kalamazoo when I was on the job market. And if you need to ask why I use the word desperate, then you probably have never been in the sad, ravaged area where it is located. There are states that are dying and states that have a long life ahead of them. Michigan is definitely moribund.

Tony Judt makes the following astute observation in his Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945:

It was a Marxist commonplace and Soviet official doctrine that Nazism was merely Fascism and that Fascism, in turn, was a product of capitalist self-interest in a moment of crisis. Accordingly, the Soviet authorities paid little attention to the distinctively racist side of Nazism, and its genocidal outcome, and instead focused their arrests and expropriations on businessmen, tainted officials, teachers and others responsible for advancing the interests of the social class purportedly standing behind Hitler.

The reason why Stalin couldn’t afford to draw attention to Hitler’s racism is that, during WWII and immediately after, Stalin was engaged in his own racist persecution of entire ethnic groups. It’s kind of hard to say, “Look at this guy! He wanted to exterminate the Jews! What an evildoer!” when you are planning to exile all of the Jews in your own country to Siberia with no plans for them to survive the move.

Soon after the victory over Nazism, the very word “Jew” would become offensive and nobody would want to say it aloud. When I was 6, my best friend Yulia shared with me in a whisper a huge secret. “We are Jews,” she said. “Do you know what this means?”

“No,” I said. “But I will ask my Mommy.”

I asked my Mommy and she said she had been planning to have this conversation with me when I was older but that she guessed I was old enough to know.

So she told me. I didn’t really understand why some people thought that my Daddy was different and disliked him for that but I knew that there was some darkness hidden in the whole issue.

“So Daddy isn’t Russian?” I asked.

“No,” my mother said. “I just told you he is Jewish.”

“So are you at least Russian?” I asked, hopefully.

“No,” she said. “I’m Ukrainian.”

“Then who is Russian in this family?” I exclaimed, feeling very disappointed. “Can I be Russian?”

When I was told it wasn’t possible, I knew we were all one hopeless family.

On the Interstate, we just overtook a small car that was emitting huge clouds of exhaust fumes. The card had a sticker saying “London Hackney Cab,” or something like that. And the steering wheel was on the right.

As we overtook it, I turned around in the passenger seat to see the driver. The prim and proper gentleman behind the wheel glared at me and pursed his lips in the inimitable British way.

WordPress has automatically updated the app I use on my iPod, and as a result I can’t answer comments on my own blog. The app pauses for about 2 seconds after each character you type. This makes the process ridiculously slow and frustrating.

The way the app now functions reminds me of this old Soviet joke about a man from Japan visiting Moscow in 1982. This businessman was stuck at the reception desk of some official and listened for 30 minutes to the official yelling behind closed doors, “Vladivostok!!! Are you there??? I can’t hear you! Speak to me, Vladivostok!”

The Japanese tourist listened to this vociferation for a while and finally asked the secretary, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but why doesn’t he call Vladivostok on the phone instead?”

And if you don’t understand the joke, you need to read my blog more often.

Sorry, I keep getting interrupted and can’t finish the post.

So, to continue, Ukraine’s president Yanukovich, who is one of Putin’s favorite puppets, has made a statement that fascists are now in power in Ukraine and he will be organizing a resistance movement.

For obvious reasons, the word “fascism” is a very charged one in Ukraine. Yanukovich has now apparently gone to Kharkov (my city which is right on the border with Russia) to organize “resistance to fascism.”

The main fear of progressive humanity both in Ukraine and abroad is that Putin will do what he did in Georgia and send in the troops. As we all know, the West stood passively by as Putin invaded Georgia. Chances are Putin will be allowed to do what he wants in Ukraine, too.

People keep asking why Yanukovich doesn’t seem eager to keep his promise to resign. My own belief – and I don’t have any sources to rely upon for this part of the post – is that Yanukovich wouldn’t be averse to resigning (and leaving the country). But his employer Putin needs him in Ukraine, and antagonizing Putin is very dangerous.

And by the way, several years ago I wrote on this blog that the Cold War was not over and the disbanding of the USSR was a short-term tactical maneuver. And guess who was right this entire time.

The problem in Ukraine is that Putin’s television is convincing the Russian-speaking Ukrainians that the protests are organized and conducted by neo-Nazis in American employ. The goal is to get them terrified to the point where they will act out violently against an imaginary threat.

This has long been Putin’s main argument for why Russia wouldn’t survive without him: unless he is permanently in power, he says, Russia will be torn into pieces by American-paid Neo-Nazis. This line is working well in Russia, and now is being tried in Ukraine.