From WashPo:

The sudden collapse of Iraqi forces in the face of lightly armed insurgents has catalyzed an emotional debate within the U.S. military about a war that, just a few years ago, seemed on the brink of going down in history as a success.

What this journalist (and everybody who is gleefully reposting this article) doesn’t understand is that the rise of ISIS will serve as ultimate proof for many Americans that the American invasion of Iraq was justified. Just the other day I heard a gentleman tell his buddy at the gym, “Remember all that talk about how we shouldn’t have gone in to Iraq because there was no Al-Qaeda there? And now everybody’s seeing we were right the entire time. Our only mistake was leaving too early but that was, you know, that President Oh-bama.”

In case somebody is unaware, things are not going well for Spain. The economy will take forever to recover, Catalonians are freaking out, corruption scandals are mushrooming, the possibility that there will be no Spain quite soon is strong, and even the World Cup brings nothing but two humiliating defeats.

Yet in the midst of all this, crowds of adults decide it’s a good moment to play “kings, queens, and princesses” and abandon themselves to the game like they don’t have a care in the world. Spanish newspapers have become unreadable because all they publish these days is “His Majesty said this and Her Majesty did that.” Believing in Majesties in year 2014 is a bizarre pursuit for anybody but it is even more idiotic for people whose royal family has disgraced itself with shameful corruption scandals just recently.

I love Spain with a blinding passion but after reading several articles expressing the belief that the new king will “save Spanish democracy” I’m finding it hard to avoid the feeling that “Spain is different” albeit not in a good way.

I fell asleep for half an hour and when I woke up I discovered that Spain had list to Chile and has now been kicked out of the World Cup.

Have I awakened into an alternative reality? Because I’m not liking it.

The Russian Parliament has passed a law imposing fines for the “unjustified use of foreign words in mass media.”

Words such as blogger, promotion, manager, PR, vintage, boutique, online, email, and countless others entered the Russian language recently simply because they denote the realities that are new to the Russian- speaking world.

In his brilliant novel The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn ridiculed precisely these kind of fruitless efforts to purge of foreign borrowings a language that pretty much consists of them and very little else. And that was before entire industries started being run on linguistic borrowings.

There was a weirdo on this blog recently trying to convince me that tenured professors cannot be fired. Here is one of a long line of examples that yes, they can: “Syracuse University has dismissed a male professor who had a consensual relationship with a female undergraduate student. The faculty member, who SU has not identified, taught, advised and supervised the student during the relationship. . . The panel recommended the associate professor be dismissed and that his tenure be revoked.” In this case, the firing was, of course, justified. However, there are also dozens of cases when tenured profs are fired because of “budget cuts.”

The ideological implications of the Oxford comma.

“Somehow, the free-market utopia that all the primary voters believe in never arrives, no matter how many privatizations and tax cuts the Republicans try. And so they seek out someone even purer, someone even more fanatical. They drag the country into another debt-ceiling fight, and this time, they say, they really mean it! But what never occurs to them is that maybe it’s their ideals themselves that are the problem.”

“The US has a responsibility to do something. I don’t know what that is. I am fairly confident, however, whatever we decide to do will be the wrong thing.” This is a fairly wide-spread approach to foreign policy, and ain’t that scary? God, people are stupid.

“Examples of blind allegiance to tribal truths, keeping us weak & ignorant.” A very good, important post.

A funny article by a Conservative who is in a tizzy that so many people believe in progress: “This happy history shapes our thinking about the world more than most of us know. Whether conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, Americans tend to think that history doesn’t matter much, that win-win solutions are easily found and that world history is moving inexorably toward a better and more peaceful place.”

I feel exactly like this blogger: “Why is it that so of the pictures that I see online are disgusting or horrifying? Even a lot of the art is decidedly un-beautiful. Ugly. I wonder — where is the beauty these days? When was the last time I saw something and thought, “Wow! That’s beautiful”? It’s so rare.”

And this is why everybody should read Clarissa (not the blogger but the novel. Although the blogger is a must-read, too.

An important post on why the recent publicity stunt by Starbucks is worthless and stupid.

This is a book I will definitely be reading: “My book begins by noting a struggle going in the culture between the efforts of growing numbers of professors and students to unplug the American university, and the so far much more powerful efforts of many universities and corporations to maintain and indeed expand wired and distance learning. I ponder the strange fact that the very people who want greater freedom and power for women are often the same people excited about technologies which – despite the good things they might do – have the effect of making it easier for women to stay home rather than venture onto open campuses and enter with their full self, as it were, culture’s unscripted public conversation, the ongoing real-world understanding and contestation of values and meanings that is the liberal arts university.” The article was deleted shortly after being posted but I promise it’s great.

What has the world come to! Republicans now have to be the sole champions of higher ed: “Senator Lamar Alexander said Thursday that he plans to attach an amendment to the labor, health, and education appropriations bill that would stop the Obama administration from moving ahead with its college ratings system. Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate’s education committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday that the amendment would prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from “using any federal funding to develop, refine, publish or implement a college ratings system.”

A very insightful post on why destroying teacher tenure will not help students.

Congress destroys the possibility of cheap flights to Europe. That makes sense because why wouldn’t our politicians want Americans to stay home and remain ignorant and easy to bamboozle?

A brilliant response to Reihan Salam’s stupid, higher ed-bashing article.

“The writer explains that her partner was quite active before they lived together, but as soon as they lived together he began to whine about how to do things and to feign not understanding, which resulted of course, in her doing them for him while he sat back and watched T.V.” A very common problem that can only be solved if the woman in question asks herself why she needs the partner to be this way.

It is very eerie to see such a completely “Soviet male” rant coming from an American.

“It seems to me and from the people I’ve talked to, is that the women who’ve had the biggest success in their careers have done so because they have a partner who carries a lot of the load in terms of having a family. And so it’s going to be either men who are going to have to share the load or take on more of it.” Of course. People who are psychologically healthy find it easy to be successful in all areas of their existence. I can’t wait for the time when “my husband doesn’t love me” stops being discussed as some sort of a feminist issue.

“President Petro Poroshenko, whose rise to power in Ukraine coincided with an aggressive crackdown on separatist militants, is calling for a temporary ceasefire by government forces. The break in action would allow the armed opposition to lay down their weapons, Poroshenko says. . . Poroshenko announced his plan for a ceasefire one day after speaking with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin by phone.” Oh God, what’s wrong with him? On what planet is a “unilateral ceasefire a good idea? 

In the comment section of this post, I explained a cultural baggage behind a joke. This just goes to show why humor is often untranslatable.

If anybody still doubted that online degrees were worthless, Starbucks is paying for a few of its baristas to get garbage online degrees. The degrees offered by the diploma mill the poor bastards have to attend are in ultra-respectable fields such as Global Leadership. What a great prospect: from a Starbucks barista straight to being a global leader.

We haven’t had a Q&A session at this blog for a while, so let’s conduct one now. Ask questions in the Comment section and I will answer.

The post will remain sticky for a few days. Scroll down for fresh posts.

I have received the following request for a blog post:

We’re asking others like you to write an article to post on your blog about what you consider to be a valuable, marketable skill as part of our “Most Marketable Skill” Campaign in honor of the class of 2014. The job market is a scary place, hopefully this campaign will help it seem less daunting to this year’s graduating class!

What is it that you think is essential for success? We want to read about the skill that you personally feel is the most important, how you acquired or plan to acquire the skill, and why it’s so indispensable for people going into the workforce.

As much as I resent the implication that there is anybody “like me” anywhere in the world, I will oblige.

One thing that is absolutely essential for success in any area of life is self-awareness that allows one to solve one’s psychological problems. The moment you start seeing the job market as “a scary place”, as opposed as en exciting place that offers you many new opportunities and adventures, this should be a sign to you that there is a psychological problem leading you to experience these fears and that this problem should be addressed sooner rather than later. The same goes for the dating market or pretty much any area of peaceful existence.

My most important skill in life is precisely this. I know how not to hide from my own psychological issues behind “the world is a scary and unpredictable place,” “bad shit can happen at any time,” “society tells us to be miserable,” “huge societal forces prevent me from living exactly the way I want to live, “I am being judged and persecuted”, etc. And the most crucial piece of knowledge I can share is that nobody is obligated to live this way and feel daunted by these thoughts. They are not part of normal existence. Misery is not part of normal existence. Life should and can be about happiness.

I have not had an easy life. I’ve shared a lot on this blog but it doesn’t even come to 5% of all that I have had to overcome. And still, I am convinced that all this “the world is a scary place” nonsense is a result of intellectual laziness and a refusal to address one’s psychological problems.

Something tells me, though, that this is not the response the reader was looking for.

A reader asked me if “the Ukrainian government is working to maintain a sense of business as usual.” This reader is absolutely right. Huge efforts are being made in Ukraine to ensure that people don’t plunge into the depths of despair because of the Russian invasion.

The government is stepping up its investment into international scholarly conferences, art festivals, concerts, etc. For instance, a jazz festival was held in the city of Lviv last week. This is a regular, yearly event, but this time there was a special effort to invite as many attendees and journalists from Russia as possible in the hopes of showing them that the “neo-nazi Western Ukraine” they hear about on TV is actually a peaceful, happy, welcoming region where it is perfectly fine to speak Russian and where nobody persecutes Russian-speakers.

Ukraine is a very large country, and armed hostilities only take place in a tiny region of it. Even in my city of Kharkiv, which is located in the East, right on the border with Russia, is completely peaceful.

And a small announcement:

If you are in Montreal, make sure you visit the concert of the greatest Ukrainian rock band “Okean Elzy” on October 9 at Place des Arts.

If you are in Ottawa, the group will be performing at the National Arts center on October 10.

And if you are in Toronto, the group’s performance will take place on October 11 at the Hershey Center.

Here is a song by this band. Note how similar it sounds to Spain’s rock. This could very easily be a song from Spain. There is an enormous (albeit unexplored) affinity between Ukraine and Spain.

 

“I really like working at your house,” the contractor says. “You are nice. I’m also working at another house and I don’t like it half as much. This is why I’m not coming to your house tomorrow.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“I’m planning to do some serious drinking with a buddy of mine tonight, and I won’t be in a good condition tomorrow. So I’ll just go work for those other people.”