We ordered a professional photo session for the baby (very expensive but totally worth it), and now when we show it to people, they invariably exclaim, “Oh, so the baby is beautiful!” Apparently, my photography was making everybody think the baby is ugly.

Of course, Obama is doing the right thing in going to Cuba. Let’s remember the sequence of events. Putin made a play for Cuba and the Latin American countries that are in thrall to Cuba as part of his plan to restore the post-WWII division of the planet into spheres of influence. Russians sank quite a bit of money into buying the favor of Cubans and Co.

The US responded with a masterful stoke that would make us all proud if we were capable of feeling anything but guilt and disaffection about any and all of our actions in the world arena. By offering a rapprochement to Cuba, the US left Putin out in the cold, feeling like an idiot who paid up and got nothing in return. And believe me, this stung.

Of course, Putin didn’t give up. He pondered, regrouped, and once again made a play for Cubans. This time, he used the dumbo Pope and the goon Goondiayev to lay a claim to Cuba as a Russian playground.

Would it make sense to just sit stupidly by and let Putin do this? Remember, he responds aggressively to any show of passivity. You encourage him in this way, and he goes and bombs somebody. So it’s a great thing that Obama is going to Cuba. What’s going to make a bigger splash, this or a visit from some stupid Goondiayev?

As for going to Scalia’s funeral, that’s just silly. Even if you think the fellow was the second coming of Benjamin Franklin, he’s now dead. He doesn’t care who goes where and when. All these symbolic gestures are without any practical value for anybody but the immediate family. I prefer our elected leaders to fulfill their duty to the living and not run around chasing corpses.

People keep asking me why I don’t try to publish my non-academic writing on more popular websites or print media. The answer is that the world is full of freaks, and I have zero interest in allowing them any access to my life.

An example. A professor of musicology wrote a beautiful post on his experience of teaching opera music to prison inmates. Immediately, a crowd of overeager hysterics descended on him to chide the professor, in a tone of fake outrage, for his racism, colonialism and un-Americanness  (the professor emigrated to the US from Italy 20 years ago.) The fellow patiently and kindly responded to the outlandish accusations by freaks who never did anything for inmates yet felt entitled to scold the professor for sharing his knowledge with prisoners.

I’m not endowed with the same kind of patience as this professor and prefer to avoid the freaks altogether. So I never publish anywhere where freaks might lurk.

Here is the musicologist’s post and the comments.

Few myths are more hilarious than the belief that there is some sort of taboo placed on mental illness: “Far from being taboo, talking about mental illness, being mentally ill, is highly fashionable. People actively seek out a diagnosis of mental sickness.”

The secret lives of Tumblr teens.

“The University of Portland has launched a “Speak Up” webpage that encourages students to report “incidents of discomfort” to its Public Safety department. “We ask members of our community to SPEAK UP and report alleged incidents of discrimination and incidents of discomfort regarding observed or experienced interactions of intolerance,” the university states on the webpage.” And now consider how many bureaucrats will be needed to sort these discomfort complaints and you’ll know why tuition is skyrocketing. But are students or parents protesting? No? Then let them have it.

The sexual misery of the Arab world.

Bernie-splaining to black voters.

The precarious history of “Las Meninas.”

California is changing, and not in a good way.

Another idealistic young woman murdered by an asylum seeker in Europe.

The Clintons are in no way to blame for the growth in mass incarceration.

What made the American 1990s so great.

I don’t understand the drama over the access to the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone. If she were alive, it would make every sense to discuss her right to privacy. But she’s dead, she doesn’t exist. What doesn’t exist can’t have rights or privacy.

In general, I find the insistence of some cultures on the necrophiliac investment of the dead with the same importance as the living to be disturbing.

So did you hear that Trump crashed in the polls after the last debate?

It seems that the “Bush lied about WMDs” jingle is not done ruining politicians. It lost John Kerry the campaign back in 2004, and now it’s destroying Trump.

Will people ever realize that, as true as it is, the statement is politically poisonous?

An African-American receptionist at the hospital gave me an appraising look and asked, “So what do we put down for your race? Other?”

“I’m white,” I said, feeling strange. I do look puffy and not my best but not enough for my race to become hard to determine. Or so I thought.

“Really?” the receptionist was incredulous. “Because you have an accent. Are you sure you are white and not Other?”

This was a profound philosophical question I was not prepared to answer.

Klara just got her first phone call.

“Hi Klara,” a gentlemen said when I picked up. “I have a flower delivery for you.”

In a lifetime of future phone calls, this is a good first one to get.

Whenever I turn away for two seconds, doctors push bags of oxycodone pills into my hands. Today, N went to pick up my prescriptions and alongside the innocent iron supplement I wanted, ended up with a pile of oxy pills.

I kept telling the doctors I wasn’t in pain but they don’t quit until they get this stuff to you. I could start a small side business pushing the stuff to addicts.

And then we wonder why addiction to the vile thing is skyrocketing.