Literary criticism was far from being the only field of study that was created to promote the goals of nationalism. There was also archeology, created to “prove” that nations were eternal in origin. And anthropology was given the task of “demonstrating” that the people of a nation were biologically related to each other and superior to those of other nations.

So Putin went to see the Pope, right? And of course he was an hour late because meeting a human being without humiliating said being is just no fun for Putin.

The Pope gave Putin a medallion with an angel engraved on it. I have no idea what the poor angel ever did to the Pope to make the fellow want to punish him like that, but here you have it, the angel went straight to Putin.

Of course, the Russian propaganda has modified this piece of news ever so slightly. Instead of “the Pope gave Putin a medallion”, the Russian media are saying “the Pope awarded Putin a medal.” I  mean, medal, medallion, it’s almost the same thing, and it’s not like the Pope will mind. If he did mind, he could have evaluated what the consequences might be before having Putin over.

So have you heard about this Nobel – prize winning scientist who said a bunch of stupid things about falling in love with weepy female lab workers?

Obviously, in everything that doesn’t concern his field of knowledge the guy is kind of dumb. But I’m hearing he’s had to resign from his university. And that’s a very bizarre and disturbing development. If we don’t like his gender discourse (and obviously we don’t), let’s not have him over to dinner. Let’s not follow his Twitter and let’s respond with, “Hey that’s really stupid” whenever he opines on gender. There’s no need to get him to terminate his work at his university over this, though.

Let’s also observe that we never hear any stories about doctors, lawyers, or statisticians being policed as a group as much as professors are all the time.