Merkel is so grateful to Erdogan for getting some of the refugees off her hands that she’s arresting everybody in Berlin who dares to criticize him. This is getting too bizarre for words.
Londoners are going nuts for a chance to eat naked at a new restaurant for crazy rich people. I’m glad the crisis is over.
It’s hard to decide which is more riduculous: the book whose author sincerely believes in the existence of a “frantic pace” in academia or her detractors who criticize the book in the voice of whiny loseroids who moan about “privilege.”
Clarissa's Blog 
“Loseroid”??? Where do you come up with all the neologisms?
🙂
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Cool, eh? I invent 5 new words a day. Klara already has more nicknames than there are names in the local phone book.
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I almost feel sorry for Angela Merkel. She’s clearly in over her head on some things, ,but the Social Democrats keep running total idiots against her and she keeps getting reelected because she is better than the idiots.
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That makes for a great campaign slogan. “Merkel. Better than total idiots.” 🙂
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The Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) at New York University (NYU) decided last Friday to support the BDS movement against Israel, and requested that the university cut off all relations with Tel Aviv University (TAU).
The GSOC is a labor union which represents the rights graduate student research assistants and workers of NYU, and represents approximately 2,000 people. The motion to support BDS was passed by a 2/3 vote.
Due to the fact that the US Congress passed legislation against BDS support, legislation several other US states have mirrored and passed individually, NYU rejected the GSOC’s call to cut off relations with TAU.
“Their (the GSOC) decision is completely against our policies,” said NYU spokesperson John Beckman.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4795564,00.html
I do not understand. Without legislation against BDS support, would NYU have to cut off relations with TAU? Does GSOC have so much power?
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I actually happen to know GSOC pretty well, and no, they have no power. The union is a total mess (not because of BDS, obviously ). They are trying to pretend that they are doing something hence this BDS circus.
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They may be a mess but there’s still hope if they are supporting BDS. Good for them.
The one peaceful movement undertaken by Palestinians to put pressure on Israel and you’re against it.
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There are no Palestinians in the leadership of the union. They are simply trying to cover for their impotence in the fight with the administration.
The real problem of the Union is that the leadership actively despises the people it tries to organize and doesn’t try to listen to their concerns.
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I haven’t read the book in question but it’s in the pile, so will probably have more to say then, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep assuming YOUR experience, in this case that academia lacks a “frantic pace”, was true of EVERYONE – I’m sure you hate it when students do that!
It may be true in your field, among your acquaintances, in your institution or region or type of institution, but other fields, settings and levels of the system may be a completely different experience. Other kinds of PEOPLE may also experience things very differently – the you you perform here (which clearly isn’t all you are!) doesn’t seem to feel any concern about her job security because of her productivity or performance in different roles, and indeed feels she has a very nice balance of life and work whilst outperforming most of her ‘comparators’. That’s really nice, and partly why I read here is to make sure my blog role always includes SOMEONE who’s confident and secure in speaking about their work, but you do keep emphasising that you are a fast worker – someone who is a slower worker, which is NOT a character flaw or a sign their work is worse or that they are lazy in many cases, may feel that you are setting a “frantic pace” and be stressed about it. Sure, that’s on THEM – at least according to your account. But what if they are continually told by the system they’re in, by observing what happens to people who don’t keep up particular metrics (the actions of administration is SO much more revealing than the policies they keep sending out to clog up our emails), by everyone around them, that there is only One Way to succeed and it feels unbearably frantic to them? Are you saying their experiences are completely false, without any analysis or further data?
I think they have every right, if they think that experience is valid, especially if they know others who share it, to explore alternatives. The reason that book is on my pile is that from what I’ve seen so far it isn’t just “oh everything is awful”, it’s an attempt to explore a different approach to things. Slow food approaches offered me useful insights and ways of changing my thinking around food, which is a psychologically and physiologically difficult area of my life, yet a lot of people scoff at them because THEY don’t see a problem with fast, or because of labels, or whatever. So why NOT read a book offering a critical analysis of the system I work in? I may not recognise it as true for my part of the system. it may help me understand what colleagues in other Faculties experience, even if it isn’t recognisable to me. It may be appallingly written and tedious. It might be revelatory. I don’t know. But I do know other readers will experience it differently, which is why I love books!
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Aren’t you in the UK, though? I’m sure it’s very different there, at least it seems so from my experience if collaborating with British journals and conference organizers. I do agree that in the UK there is often a lot of insanity. Last month I was given 3 weeks to introduce enormous changes into the article by my UK publishers. In the US, I’d get 6 months and then would be offered two extensions.
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I’m in the UK, yes, and I am NSTEM which has a very “macho” and competitive kind of culture generally. That said, I started reading the book, and so far it’s pretty sensible – I certainly like its stance on the problem of too many administrators and the belief that things only happen if they are documented and assessed and measured and signed off, and find it quite similar to your stance on some of these matters!
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It may not be a culture of speed but there is a definite discourse of speed, and they do keep adding more useless bureaucratic tasks. Standard advice for all problems involves time management, fitting things into 15 minute segments, “cutting corners,” “speed grading,” etc. It drives me batty. I was always efficient and tend not to waste effort but the pleasure in it all involves allowing oneself to get into things. This is what I think these professors are talking about. Today all I got done was the creation of a study guide and essay questions on one work for one class, and some thought about an article. What I should have done: instead of the work on the article, a pile of grading and grade posting, and I should not have spent so much time creating the essay questions. But I allowed myself to get into the work I am teaching, and it was fun and did something for me even though so much work was not strictly necessary, and the article idea just hit me and I decided I should run with it, it goes with my book project and so isn’t extraneous and I don’t take enough research time anyway, so — I went with that. Time managers would say I should have gone with plan but I think I got so much more out of not doing that.
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Yes, exactly, discourse. People talk and talk and create endless hustle and bustle over nothing and feel extremely overworked because nothing tires one as much as doing useless things. I swear, if I have to sit through one more meeting where people debate for 30 minutes whether to say “research products” or “products of research”, I will explode.
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I also find that for every “corner” I “cut” I sacrifice a lot of quality. If you can do a lot in 15 minutes, the converse is also true — cut out 15 minutes and you may lose more than it is in your best interests to do.
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What an absurd argument. With that logic only Iraqi people could have the moral authority to condemn the US invasion of Iraq. Or only ukranians condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. What kind of standard is that?
Also I’m talking about BDS, which you also don’t support. BDS is not a creation of the west the last time I checked. It’s a form of non violent Palestinian resistance. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to spin it otherwise.
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I support the right of the Palestinians to engage in BDS 100%. But – to use the example of Ukraine – it drives me crazy when people use it to signal tribal allegiance with no actual interest in or understanding of the issue. Like when Kasich announces that he’d “send weapons to Ukraine.” It’s maddening! I wish he forgot we exist at all.
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Ah, the ‘yes, but..’ formulation that you’re so fond of.
Here’s a brilliant idea:
Deny Palestinian people their freedom of movement.
Declare as illegitimate any protest occurring outside of Gaza and West Bank because there are no Palestinians present in that protest!
Genius, I tell ya!
OK, BDS may be too complicated for now. I want to ask a simpler question.
Do you support the occupation?
I don’t believe you’ve ever answered this question. My apologies if I’m mistaken here.
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Are you serious?? Why would I support the occupation? Of course, I don’t. I think it’s an absolute disaster.
And I don’t consider every protest illegitimate. Only the ones conducted by morally bankrupt organizations that use it to cover up for internal trouble. Like the American Anthropological Association. And I’d say exactly the same if they protested Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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\ Do you support the occupation?
My problem is that I am unsure what better realistic thing I may support instead of occupation.
Especially since Gaza Strip (with Hamas) and West Bank (with Palestinian Authority government) do not have territorial continuity. How can they be parts of the same country of Palestine? Look at the map. I thought once that if one wishes for Palestinian nation state, there should be an exchange of territory with Gazans moving to lands near West Bank which now belong to Israel and giving Gaza’s land to us, but it won’t happen ever in practice, in my opinion.
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I believe that the only way out of the current dead end is through dramatically improving the standard of living of Palestinians.
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Families of Palestinian terrorists visit East Jerusalem school
East Jerusalem elementary school hosts parents of terrorists killed while committing attacks against Jews in Jerusalem to speak at a special meeting; Palestinian Education Ministry officials were also in attendance.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4795488,00.html
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Разговор на деревянном языке
23 июня 2015 в НИЦ “Мемориал” доктор филологических наук, профессор Европейского университета Николай Борисович Вахтин прочел лекцию на тему: «Советский язык и его последствия». Лекцию слушала Евгения Литвинова.
http://www.cogita.ru/analitka/otkrytye-diskussi/razgovor-na-derevyannom-yazyke
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http://www.vox.com/2016/4/22/11487098/obama-british-grandfather-kenya
“We tend to consider it not only legitimate but to some degree noble that European leaders might carry on the memories of their ancestors’ suffering, and might seek redress for historical wrongs.
But this right is rarely extended to the victims of colonialism or their ancestors.”
On a related note, I want to know how it is that the British Empire rarely gets a mention in discussions of ‘evil’ in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their barbarity towards its colonial subjects went on for fucking centuries.
The War Nerd may be exaggerating for effect, but the point remains.
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