So my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 arrived and it’s ENORMOUS. It’s as big as my head, almost. It is so funny how just a few years ago everybody wanted their phone to be as tiny as possible, and now it has all gone in the opposite direction. Now it’s prestigious for a phone to be closer in size to a tablet.

I don’t know what I will do now with my smallish handbags because this phone will not fit in them. I hope that, at least, blogging will be easy from the new phone. It has a small pen, and all. I will feel very chic with this phone.

People ask me how I manage to do so much research. My secret is my tiny notebook and my autistic brain. I have these tiny notebooks that I take everywhere with me:

Whenever there is a moment (at a dentist’s, at the restaurant when my companion goes to the bathroom, etc), I whip the notebook out and write my article.

Right now I have done some good, useful writing for the first chapter of my new book during a departmental meeting:

The magical part is that I can actively participate in a meeting, make comments, argue, etc while writing my book. The two activities don’t interfere with each other.

I have finally had a moment to open my newsfeed, and this is what I found:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, you’ve probably heard about the Ben Affleck/Bill Maher/Sam Harris scuffle on Maher’s show Real Time.

I’ve been totally living under a rock because there’s been too much work this week. Can anybody update me on what happened? Also, what is this I’m hearing about another killing of a black man in St. Louis? Does anybody know what’s been going on? Are there any other news I’ve missed?

This is proving to be the hardest semester ever. Please inform me of the important events in the news if you want to spare yourselves some whining about my difficult semester. Remember, I’m an academic, I can outwhine anybody!

Yet another unknown French guy is given the Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel is becoming more pathetic and irrelevant by the minute. Who are all these nameless, reader less folks who have been honored with the prize in the recent years?