My university is just driving me nuts right now. First, I had to start using the Outlook for my work email. This was extraordinarily inconvenient but there was no choice. I have gotten used to it and am making do with it.

Now, however, we are canning the Outlook model and switching to something called Online Office365. This entails yet another disruption and yet another set of problems. I have to schlep to the office and have an appointment with somebody who will reconfigure my computer to receive the emails. How I will be able to access them from home is not even being addressed.

I just want to do my work in peace. I don’t care which stupid corporation we sign yet another humongously expensive contract with. I just want to be left in peace.

At least. I’m not teaching right now. Imagine the people who are teaching an online course and need to be responding to student email all day long.

This is so annoying.

It’s good to see that Northwestern is drowning in money so much that it needs to waste it on prosecuting professors for writing essays:

Laura Kipnis, the Northwestern University professor

who became the subject of two Title IX complaints after publishing an essay in The Chronicle Review, has been cleared of wrongdoing by the university under the federal civil-rights law, which requires colleges to respond to reports of sexual misconduct.

Using Title IX to investigate people for writing articles is beyond outrageous. It is even more outrageous that all this money did not go towards promoting research or improving teaching.

Here is the Kipnis story for those who missed it.

I don’t believe I will ever be able to blog under my own name because as the standard of living improves and our society grows richer, people tend do find offense in more and more outlandish things.

Human beings need adversity to overcome and when there is none, they will invent it. These complaints against mean professors who inflict horrifying damage by saying or writing something will keep growing more frequent. I have personally experienced an explosion in them since the recession started rolling back.