And this is the famous hedgehog / frog / turtle.

It was made by a local artist who is 90 years old.

Can anybody explain to me why people consider it so necessary to remove the Christmas lights today? Why not just leave them on until New Year’s or at least until the end of the weekend? I’m very annoyed.

To make everybody feel better, here is a photo of the hedgehogs N gave me for Christmas:

My Christmas trees are not going down until the end of January. I love them, they make me happy. What do I care if the neighbors want to get rid of theirs as fast as possible? Plus, this is how it’s done in my culture.

Changing one’s mind on a long-held and cherished belief is one of the most valuable things one can do for one’s own development.

If you haven’t changed your mind on anything major recently, you are at risk for intellectual stagnation. Every year, I remind people to pick up a new hobby, explore an entertainment genre that is new to them, change their routine. Unless we force our mind into new directions, it will grow moldy.

What have you changed your mind on this year?

Forget shopping! Here is a much better way of having a nice time – and it’s completely free! Reading and discussing what you’ve read with intelligent, well-informed people doesn’t cost anything.

It is horrifying to see how many opportunists are trying to milk the murder of Michael Brown to promote their stupid careers. I haven’t felt this disgusted for a long time.

I had no idea anybody still took the Implicit Association Test so seriously. People have so little self-awareness that they flock to these fake and meaningless “tests”. I remember taking this Implicit Association Test a few years ago, and it was obvious that the test had been designed by unhealthy people who were desperate to manipulate everybody into believing they were the same kind of jerkwads as the test makers.

Finally everybody has noticed the rapidly improving economy: “Tuesday’s CNN/ORC poll showed for the first time in seven years, a majority of Americans — 51% — have a positive view of the economy, a sharp increase from the 38% who felt that way in October. The jump was present in every demographic group — men, women, whites, non-whites, urban, rural — and was largest among Americans who earn less than $50,000 annually.”

A great insight: “I really don’t get this media obsession with the idea that The Kids Today aren’t living their lives precisely as the olds imagine they lived their lives back in the day.” Stop belly-aching about the young people. Go take care of your own stupid life instead.

Fighting domestic abuse in India.

Finally, the Liberals are waking up to what Putin’s ideology is really like: “While Putin says he is standing against fascism in Ukraine, he’s had no qualms about cozying up to Europe’s far right. Analysts say the growing bond between Putin and far-right European politicians could benefit to both sides. “In Russia today there is a mix of exalting nationalism, exalting the church and Christian values. . . They are now replacing the red star with the cross, and they are representing themselves as the ultimate barrier against the Islamization of the continent.” Let’s wait and see how long it takes The Nation to figure out that supporting Putin’s far-right regime is a little bizarre.

And from the adventures of the truly shameless: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has revived a lawsuit, dismissed by a lower court, charging the law school of the University of the District of Columbia with race and gender discrimination against Stephanie Brown, a black woman who was denied tenure. The ruling noted that Brown had published one journal article and had another accepted at the point at which she was denied tenure.” We, the academics, will keep up this extreme shamelessness until there will be no way of defending the institution of tenure any longer. This is just sad.

And since we are talking about lack of self-awareness, here is a scary example of somebody who is not even trying to gain any insight into himself. This kind of posts just freaks me out.

Now it has become clear why my students are so terrified of the word “black” and wince whenever I use it.

How to tell if you are a really bad teacher.

Triumph of the technocrat: a sculpture.

How the elevator transformed America.

The illusion of constant business is just that, an illusion: “Why do people feel so rushed? Part of this is a perception problem. On average, people in rich countries have more leisure time than they used to. This is particularly true in Europe, but even in America leisure time has been inching up since 1965, when formal national time-use surveys began.”

Very inventive squeeze-balls.

“And I just think, why do I keep coming back where people don’t like me? They may love me, because we’re family and we kind of have to.” People, please listen: this is NOT POSSIBLE. Love is the highest degree of acceptance. If somebody doesn’t like or respect you, if they casually say hurtful things on a regular basis, if you routinely feel discomfort by their side, this means THEY DON’T LOVE YOU. You are not loved by these people.

There are few things I enjoy more than observing Americans try to convince themselves that they hung the Moon.

I find it disturbing that these humongously outdated blogs are so much more popular than mine.

Why would anybody want to spend any time on Twitter at all?

“In the US you will never see any “progressives” opposing the use of violence including lethal violence by the security forces of Togo and Gabon. US Black Lives matter to them, but African Lives do not when the people doing the killing are African governments backed by the “progressive” and “socialist” government of France. It is considered far more important by US “progressives” that France provides free health care to rich white people than it is that France backs brutal and corrupt regimes in Africa that kill people.” France totally sucks, folks. And our indifference to Africa sucks, too. I have recently started trying to get educated on what is happening on the continent, and there is a million fascinating things happening.

Thin people are to blame for global warming. Why am I not surprised!

“Darrell Issa (R-Vista) wasted enormous congressional resources over the last 18 months trying to inflate the IRS “scandal” into a mountain. The release Tuesday of his final, petulant report on the affair marks what may be its final decline into a mouse. Contrary to his assertions in countless appearances on Fox News, there’s no evidence that the Obama White House directed — or indeed was involved in any way — in the supposed targeting of conservative nonprofit groups for special scrutiny by the IRS.” I said back when this scandal took place that it was a nothing affair, a completely meaningless, overinflated drama. It’s shocking always to be so right about everything.

Is single-payer health care simply not possible in the US? “Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday dropped his plan to enact a single-payer health care system in his state — a plan that had won praise from liberals but never really got much past the framework stage. “This is not the right time” for enacting single payer, Shumlin said in a statement, citing the big tax increases that would be required to pay for it.”

[Russian.] As the economic crisis in Russia intensifies, the support of Russians for their president grows. Yes, I said grows.

If you want me to comment on interesting links, leave them in the comment section of this post.

Do you know this old joke that the definition of an ambivalent reaction is when you see your mother-in-law fall into an abyss in your new car?

I’m in a somewhat similar situation. On the one hand, I’m happy that the rouble is depreciating for ideological reasons. But on the other hand, I have 200,000 roubles waiting for me in Moscow. And this is the money I wanted to use to go on vacation.

There is no unadulterated joy in life.

The most hilarious headline I have read in months:

He requires them to volunteer and commands them to be spontaneous. Yes, that’s what volunteering is all about: being coerced into doing stuff under the threat of losing your job. 

After you stop laughing, though, consider the implications of this approach:

Marcus Lemonis, host of CNBC’s The Profit, knows how important volunteering is. He values it so much, in fact, that he mandates every single one of his employees volunteer at least 32 hours every year.

Why? His response is simple. “Once you begin the process [of volunteering], you become addicted to it,” says Lemonis. “What I heard back from employees was: ‘You changed my marriage!’ ‘You saved my life!'”

Volunteering builds character. And for Lemonis, character is defined by three traits: “Humility, accessibility and transparency.” 

This millionaire believes that he has the right to dispose of his employees’ free time. This is the time he isn’t paying them for but they are still obligated to spend it the way he considers cute. He is convinced that it is up to him to manage their marriages, organize their private lives, and mold their personalities. I have no doubt that he considers himself a very good person while he does this shit. 

People who do this stuff – bosses, supervisors, employers, professors, etc. – need to be told that their behavior is disgusting. This is not a sign of them being highly evolved as human beings. It is a sign of them emptying the sewers of their diseased psyche onto their fellow human beings. And there is nothing cute about that.

We can all collectively do something about this unhealthy practice: when somebody proudly shares these or similar ideas with us, all we need to do is react with visible shock and disgust. 

P.S. If anybody uses the words “serfdom” or “slavery” in the comments, I will ban them. It’s because of you, you melodramatic whiner, that nobody can have a serious discussion of anything any longer. Shit doesn’t have to be “just like the Holocaust” or “just like slavery” to stink.

P.P.S. I hope this post hasn’t messed with anybody’s holiday cheer. I’ve been making inhuman efforts not to write any angry posts for two weeks but my patience is wearing thin. I might not resist until New Year’s.

Spent two hours yesterday trying to explain to N what an app is. He asked me a question that makes a modern person’s brain boil, “But what is the point of apps? Why do they exist?”

Every year or so, I get wildly enthusiastic about a writer and a philosopher (thinker, literary critic) and read everything by them. My intellectual life started in 1999, and here is my list of formative authors for each year. The first in every line is a writer and the other one is a thinker / critic / philosopher.

1999: Juan Rulfo and Sarmiento
2000: Benito Perez Galdos and Octavio Paz (I don’t get Paz’s poetry and only read his essays)
2001: Leopoldo Alas and Fernandez Retamar
2002: Larra and Benedict Anderson
2003: Juan Goytisolo and Antony Smith
2004: Juan Marse and Fredric Jameson
2005: Mario Vargas Llosa and Ernst Curtius
2006: Espido Freire and Terry Eagleton
2007: Pardo Bazan and Foucault
2008: Munoz Molina and Alain Badiou
2009: Edmundo Paz Soldan and Giorgio Agamben
2010: Rosa Montero and Zygmunt Bauman
2011: Almudena Grandes and Jonathan Mayhew
2012: Benjamin Prado and Slavoj Zizek
2013: Andrés Trapiello and Helen Graham
2014: Rafael Chirbes and Philip Bobbitt

I have realized that “mushroom julienne” does not mean the same thing in English as in Russian. Our juliennes are mushrooms stewed in white wine and then baked with shredded parmesan, nutmeg,  and heavy whipping cream.

N and I have exchanged our Christmas stockings. We both tried to give each other toy hedgehogs. N was successful: he gave me two really great hedgehogs. My hedgehog, however, turned out to be a frog. I bought it in the last week of the semester when I was exhausted and not in full control of my faculties. I do remember wondering why the hedgehog I bought was green but I had no energy to investigate.

Merry Christmas!

Rafael Chirbes, one of the greatest living writers of Spain, quotes with approval the words of the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki:

Most writers understand literature to the same extent as birds understand ornitology.

Chirbes agrees with the critic.

I have long observed that a writer’s analysis of his or her own work is often a lot more pedestrian and drab than what my sophomores can come up with as readers.