One thing I did not expect to find in the UK is humongous food portions. I live in the US, so I’m no stranger to huge plates but even I am taken aback by the portion size around here. Yesterday I went to a very elegant and expensive restaurant that served me a plate of carrot and parsnip soup that tasted divine yet had the size of a small swimming pool:

I think I hurt the chef’s feelings by not finishing it but I’d have needed to stay there for a couple of days to eat it all.

By the way, since people are asking, here is the deconsecrated chapel where the conference feeds us:

It’s so big that it doesn’t fit into a single frame:

I’ve also been to a Jamie Oliver restaurant. I know somebody is a great fan, so it’s time for a spot of envy. 🙂

Here is me looking and feeling terribly jet-lagged and overfed:

An Indian gentleman at the conference who is opposed to the caste system informed everybody collectively and then individually that he belongs to an upper caste.

An American gentleman who is a feminist informed everybody collectively and then every woman present individually that he has male privilege.

A white lady who defends the rights of the indigenous people of the Andes informed everybody collectively and then every person of color individually that she has white privilege.

I wonder what people did when there wasn’t such an easy way to tell people to their faces, “I’m better than you!” It must have been torture to keep all this superiority bottled up inside.

And now there seems to be another identity scandal that involves a scholar who is accused of not being Cherokee.

I will never become American enough to understand this “don’t touch my identity” drama. This is a legacy of being an immigrant nation and having no other way to avoid getting lost in a mass of people than grasping on to artificial identity constructs.

I always say things like, “in Spain we do this and that” or “our Calderón is so much better than your Shakespeare.” Hispanic people don’t seem to have a problem with it. To the contrary, they always keep including me with, “we, the Hispanics” or “as one of us, you understand.” But if somebody did object, I’d tell them to go stuff themselves because, in all probability, they don’t even remotely do as much for disseminating and raising the prestige of the Spanish culture as I do. So what makes them more “Hispanic”? An accident of birth? Yes, how hugely enlightened. Let’s all police each other’s DNA profiles now. And maybe even measure a few noses while we are at it.

I would feel nothing but happy and honored if somebody from, say, Australia or Denmark wanted to be Ukrainian and practice the language and the culture of Ukraine. But as I said, I’ll never be American enough to understand why one needs to begrudge a completely arbitrary identity to anybody else.

Finally somebody in the UK is waking up to what the real sanctions against the Russian bandits should be and is proposing to clean up Londongrad. It’s an absolute mystery why this is still not being done. Can anybody really be opposed to such reasonable and good measures?

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is floating legislation that would name most U.S. coastal waters after former President Ronald Reagan.

And then we’ll all float in the ocean of endless Reagan. Oh, wait, aren’t we already doing that?

This is the most chic conference I’ve ever attended, my friends. The first day of the conference culminated in a wine reception and then a banquet.

The banquet took place in a deconsecrated former chapel. The combination of stained glass, long banquet tables, wall statues, a huge pipe organ, candles in ornate candelabra, uniformed waiters who ask, “Shall I bring out pudding, ma’am?”, and a really good 4 – course dinner was very impressive. I’ve never been fed this well at any conference.

It’s curious how many Canadians showed up for this conference. This shows that Canada is doing quite well financially and universities can afford to send people overseas. Two Canadian scholars from different regions told me that their schools have recently gone from the 3:3 to the 2:2 teaching load. I was green with envy.

There is also a large group of Australians, which must mean that Australia is doing quite well economically, as well. Australian scholars shocked me with the really sophisticated quality of their scholarship. If anybody labors under the impression that Australia is an intellectual backwater, think again.

This is the college where I’m staying:

The lawn looks sad because it’s a habitual place for cricket players. And here’s a patio close to the college:

And one of the really cute buildings in town:

And here’s another one:

My life is hard because I found another enormous bookstore. And a really cute little bookstore that sells stationery and Venetian masks:

This is very temping! Credit cards crawl out of my pocket of their own free will, it seems.

This is the best conference ever, people.  I talked for 20 minutes, and then answered questions for the next hour and a half. Everybody had so many questions. This was by far the best collection of questions I ever got.

And of course this was only possible because I didn’t read my paper. I just talked about my topic without any props at all.

The conference organizers will be very happy that they invited me because as the first speaker I really revved up the audience for the following presentations.

This is the Bodleian Library that houses 11,000,000 volumes:

In the 17th century, people built these temples of knowledge because they knew nothing mattered more.

And now all we here is “job market preparation,” “there is no need for a president to have even a basic education,” “let’s substitute ‘search for truth’ with ‘worshipping the market’.”

I’m very disappointed in all of us.

Hey, so Bernie Sanders is Jewish?? I had no idea.

I’m now considering going back to supporting him. Just imagine, a Socialist Jew president of the United States. Putin’s head is going to explode. The Kremlin propaganda machine will go into such an overdrive that it might just break down. 

Everybody is oh, so shocked that Tsipras went and offered an even harsher proposal that the one he’s been resisting by the means of the hapless referendum.

It’s like people are not even paying attention. Right after the referendum, Tsipras went to Putin. They talked and talked, and now Tsipras is agreeing to everything the EU wants. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Tsipras was counting on Putin’s help but Putin threw him over. In all probability, Putin let Tsipras down because Obama asked him to. Remember all those calls Putin’s been making to Obama?

Remember, there’s nothing more that Putin wants than to be loved by the US. Insignificant little Tsipras didn’t stand a chance.