A really good link on the myth of a lazy student.

Northwestern is freaking out about sex in a variety of entertaining ways. It’s good to see people who get a chance to navel – gaze like this while we are battling for the very survival of higher education down here.

Few things are more off-putting than Dan Savage ‘ s bizarre marriage advice. Is the guy even married? There is some sort of a huge marriage – related dysfunction going on with him. Plus, he seems to have a weird attachment to a fantasy about husbands concealing the truth about their sex lives from their wives.

Why it matters that the U of Oklahoma frat chant was also a poem.

Are there people who are stupid enough to pay $83,000 for an online medical degree when the real one costs exactly the same?

[Russian] A museum that will glorify Stalin will open in the Russian city of Tver.

[Russian] The Russians in the Crimea are making desperate and pathetic attempts to pretend that the locals are happy with the annexation.

What does it say about my fight against diabetes that the very first thing I associated with this article’s title was a candy bar?

“Fat people aren’t disgusting, but the whole fat acceptance/fat celebration culture certainly is.” Hear, hear. I agree completely. The extraordinary irresponsibility of the “fat acceptance” folks just boggles the mind.

” The Greek government also riled up its citizens and now doesn’t know how to deliver anything satisfactory to them, to the detriment of political stability.” I just hope the same kind of idiocy doesn’t happen in Spain. All the stupid Syriza has achieved so far was to buoy up Putin. And what a great achievement that was.

How I hate these strawman arguments: ” While the U.S. pretends to be a class-free society (even as U.S.-ians spend an inordinate amount of time making very subtle class distinctions), the reality is we do have classes with specific economic interests.” Who is the evildoer that pretends this is a class free society? Where are the articles and books making that case?

Making fun of Libertarians is always enjoyable.

When, oh when will people stop confusing psychological problems with a political stance?

Zygmunt Bauman condemns the insistent attempts to look for non-existent local solutions to globally begotten problems.

It is as much a mistaken strategy as looking for political remedies to private ills.

You’ll ask why it should bother me that some unknown person indulges in public spectacles of self-hatred. It bothers me because these exhibitions of diseased psyches leave no space for actual political discussions. Since I started referencing Bauman, he calls this sad process a colonization of the public arena by the unchecked spillage of the purely private. As a result, we have no public sphere any longer. There is just a never-ending stream of private woes, complaints, and narratives.

9:15 – the stupid DST is messing with my head, so I wake up late.

9:15-10:30 – getting myself together and fixing myself a Canadian breakfast (bagel, cream cheese, smoked salmon) to the sounds of Dr. Phil reruns playing in the background.

10:30-10-50 – blogging and Tweeting.

10:50-12:50 – working on the book.

12:50-13:40 – cooking. I made turkey kotlety that are supposed to last until the weekend, so I will be free of massive cooking obligations for a few days.

13:40-14:00 – lunch.

14:00-15:00 -working on the book.

15:00-16:00 – a relaxation hour. This means blogging and playing My Family Farm to the sounds of the Dr Phil Show.
16:00-17:00 – visiting the florist ‘ s to send flowers to a friend who’s come out of heart surgery successfully and running a few errands.

17:00-19:00 – reading and annotating the sources for my book at the bookstore.

19:00-21:30 – the gym with N.

And if I manage to get in another hour of reading somewhere in the next few hours after that, I will feel that I’m not wasting my spring break.

Today’s Dr. Phil Show is very good, people. There is a small kid who his parents say is destined to become the next Ted Bundy. The parents say they exist in mortal fear of their lives being taken by the little boy.

From the very start, Dr. Phil told the parents that the kid was simply doing and saying what the parents wanted him to do and say. They only pay attention to him when he says things like “I will kill you”, so he says them.

There is zero probability that these parents will hear Dr. Phil and recognize that they are not victims of this tiny child. But it is still absolutely crucial that somebody say these things in public.

The child is adopted, which explains this weird dynamic.

Decided to watch some Russian TV, turned on a random channel, heard that President Obama “was installed in power by the Rothschild clan in order to weaken the US and allow Europe to win world dominance,” spit at the screen, and turned off the TV. 

And it’s not just some especially freaky program, people. It’s like that and worse on every channel, all day, and every day. And newspapers are even worse. 

It’s the spring break, so I’m working on my book from home. I just looked out of the window of my study and saw a young deer strolling right in front of the window. At a little distance, two fat raccoons with stripy tails were sauntering by the creek. 

My colleagues are planning a massive exodus from this university and this region because there is no political will and no interest on the part of the citizens in preserving public education in Illinois. It will be a great pity to have to leave this beautiful area. 

And just to answer the question of “But why, why do the Russians hate Americans so much?” once and for all:

 

This is the city of Voronezh with the population of over 1,000,000.

As an old saying goes, there are two problems in Russia: the roads and idiots. Of course, the roads are allowed to remain in this state by idiots, so there is just a single problem in Russia. 

When you spend your life in one of these dilapidated wooden structures staring at this horrible muck, it’s hard not to develop a profound hatred for Obama who obviously caused all of this. (I’m not sure just yet how he caused all of this but all I need to do to find out is turn on my Russian TV.)

The Chair said during the annual evaluations that he can’t help admiring how easy it is for me to stay silent every time when the question of “Who’s willing to volunteer for this committee?” is asked.

I explained that I had decided years ago that I would only do the kind of service that I found fun and useful to me.

If you are a literary critic who has worked on analyzing poetry, what did you read, what sources did you study to teach you how to do it?

If you are a critic who has worked on analyzing film, what did you read, what sources did you study to teach you how to do it?

What do you recommend to your students to acquire these skills?

The following passage could be used to teach students about understatement:

Remember the jingoistic, post-9/11 days of “freedom fries” and “freedom toast,” after France declined to join the U.S.-led coalition? Well, in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the global backlash it has prompted, Russia is experiencing something similar, only intensified by total state control of the media.

Freedom fries are child’s play compared to the anti-American hysteria that is engulfing Russia. It is a mistake to connect it to current events, though, since it always existed. It maybe took a tiny little break in the late eighties and has been getting ramped up like crazy since the late 1990s. 

What’s different in today’s anti-Americanism in Russia is that it is now a lot more racialized than it ever were. Ritual lynchings of President Obama and enormously offensive racial jokes proliferate. And according to the most recent poll, 17% of Russians believe that a nuclear war would be a great idea. This number is growing but it’s heartening that at least some American media have started noticing what is going on.