Apparently, another round of “history wars” is underway as historians battle politicians over the right to define how history will be taught in US high schools.

All I can say is that there is something deeply wrong with the way history is taught to high-schoolers. My students this year were extremely vague on the Vietnam War. And I mean vague to the point of not knowing who fought whom and for what reason. The US involvement was barely on their radar.

I don’t think I need to tell anybody on this blog why it’s absolutely crucial to know about Vietnam. But I have no space in my syllabus for it. I already have enough with needing to break the news that Hitler ‘ s been dead since 1945.

History is the most ideological of disciplines but if someone at least tried to get the students learn some basic facts, that’d help.

Why the LSU will not go bankrupt  (for now):

“So who is going to pay the price for saving LSU?” I said.

“The poor,” he said, referring to the severe cuts headed to public health.

“I don’t want to sound naive here,” I said, “but isn’t that extremely unjust?”

Kenneth raised his eyebrows. “That’s a good question, but here’s the sad reality: the poor don’t vote.”

Of course, the very first time I wore my Ukrainian necklace, I had to come across a scary Russian – speaking nurse. A Russian speaker in St. Louis always means a Jewish immigrant. And as much as Jews support Ukraine back in Ukraine, Jewish Russian -speaking immigrants are as Putinoid as one can possibly be.

The reason for this is obvious. Russian – speakers find it extraordinarily hard to adapt after emigration. They don’t feel comfortable in their new countries and lash back in confused anger. And what’s a better way to lash out against the United States than to adopt Putin’s Obama – hating Ukraine – bashing anti-Western propaganda?

Today is also the day when the doctor’s office chose to greet me like this:

I’m not that into candy but after abstaining from food for 14 hours and from water for 3, I’m ready to stuff any food I come across into my mouth.

As you probably know, I believe there are writers and authors. Writers create art. Authors produce commercial crap for entertainment purposes. Make no mistake, I’m all for commercial crap. I’m a huge fan of mystery novels, for instance, and feel grateful to their authors for entertaining me.

What really creeps me out, though, is when creators of entertainment fare berate other creators of entertainment fare for not producing great literature. What can be more ridiculous than somebody like Ursula Le Guin ranting against “packaged microwavable fiction [that] ruins the taste, destabilizes the moral blood pressure, and makes the mind obese”? She made a fortune out of selling precisely this kind of product. There is zero reason for her to feel condescending towards others who do the same.

I just used pneumatic mail for the first time ever, and it’s just as well because it’s about to be killed by apps. And what a pity because it’s so much fun.

I find all of the discussions about Jenna and Jill Duggar ‘ s “victimization” to be tasteless in the extreme. They spoke out in public, stating that they are fine with whatever happened and don’t consider themselves victimized. These are adult women, they freely expressed their vision of the situation,  what else is there to discuss?

It’s especially disgusting that the dismissal of these women’s narratives happens under the banner of “concern for the victims.”