This story didn’t make it onto my link encyclopedia because I just saw it but it’s both funny and sad, folks. An economist was taken off a plane for engaging in a highly subversive pursuit of. . . algebra.

And then these people go and vote.

Another thing that I had no idea about is that even very tiny babies have a wide emotional range. Klara makes it very clear when she is angry, disappointed, sad, happy, pleasantly surprised, and sociable. She is at the stage of breaking into a huge smile whenever she sees me, and when her tummy hurts, the conflicting emotions of pain and joy appear on her beautiful little face.

It’s truly fascinating how such a tiny baby like Klara can entertain herself for hours. Granted that her tummy doesn’t rumble too painfully, she’ll play with her little hands, stare around, observe, think, and smile to herself for as long as she is awake. I truly hope she retains the priceless quality of knowing how to have fun in quiet solitude into adulthood.

Racism is naked in South Africa – literally.

College hiring is the best in years.

The British Left has a Jewish problem.

“An English or literature/cultures/linguistics major is about as employable as an economics, math/statistics, or political science/global studies/area studies major.  The English major is about as likely to still be seeking employment upon graduation as a chemistry major, and less likely to be seeking employment than the earth, society and environment major. English majors are far less likely than psychology majors to be headed directly to graduate school; on the other hand, they have a much higher rate of initial employment.”

Another ridiculous freakout on the part of rich, bratty students.

Does anybody want to guess the only G20 country whose citizens overwhelmingly prefer Trump to Clinton as the future US president?

I know, it’s too easy. But in case you’ve been vacationing on Mars for the past year, the answer is under the fold.

Continue reading “International Support for Trump: A Riddle” →

Well, now the WordPress app died altogether. From a fantastic, perfectly working app back in 2012, WordPress tinkered it into a complete loss of all functioning. I understand that the employees have got to get paid and justify their salaries with constant “improvements” to the app. But can the company pay them for not touching the app instead? This is getting very tiresome.

And yes, not only do I bring money to WordPress with my ad placements but I also pay them for hosting the blog.

The way I judge if a book on foreign policy has the potential to be intelligent is by looking at the part that discusses the FSU countries. I obviously don’t have enough information to say if an author understands Somalia but I assume that if s/he is saying something valuable about the FSU, there is a possibility – not a guarantee, of course – that the author is not an idiot and will also say something useful about Somalia.

Mandelbaum’s  Mission Failure says something very important about the FSU countries. The reason why they have not been able to build functioning societies and are drowning in corruption and authoritarianism, Mandelbaum says, has nothing to do with the US. It is enormously refreshing to read this because I’m truly fed up with people’s incapacity to analyze Eastern Europe without making the US the center of that discussion. Mandelbaum points out that it is insane to expect totalitarian states magically to become democratic, orderly, peaceful, and prosperous. This will take time, and the FSU countries will take as much time to arrive there as they need.

Unfortunately, Mandelbaum is not brave enough to make a clean break with the “we cause everything” mentality that everybody in this country shares. If he wants his book to sell, he has to pander to his self-centered readers. This is why he trots out the tired, ancient canard about Russia supposedly turning against the US because of the “treacherous” NATO expansion. The real reason that Russia turned virulently  anti-American since the very early 1990s, however, has nothing to do with the NATO or the US. 

The Russian Federation has 84 federal subjects. These are regions that are inhabited by people of different races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, histories and with very little connection to each other. None of these federal subjects feel anything but hatred and resentment towards Moscow and St. Petersburg. The territory is enormous, and huge, empty areas separate the capital from most of these federal subjects.

So what do people do when they need to hold such a disparate group together? We all know the answer: they invent a shared enemy, of course. The outlandish displays of hatred against the US have been the only shared hobby of the 140,000,000 inhabitants of Russia for decades. Recently, it hasn’t been enough, and the new shared hobbies of hating Ukraine and then Syria were invented.

I know it’s hard to believe that people can hate you not because of anything you’ve done but because of reasons of their own but that’s the case with Russians. A regular Russian person who burns an effigy of Obama with a monkey’s body or fantasizes about nuking the US isn’t being provoked into this hatred by the NATO. He does all of this crap in response to his own, deeply internal issues. Disband NATO tomorrow, and he’ll only hate the US more.

I spent 6 hours offline, and in the meanwhile the Internet exploded with posts, articles and long screeds about an entirely trivial tweet of Trump eating tacos. The fellow can’t fart without an army of journalists finding profound meaning in this act.

He eats tacos! What can that possibly mean? What are the profound philosophical ramifications of his taco eating?

Hillary’s thought out and detailed policy positions cannot compete. Nobody cares about them as long as they can over analyze Trump’s lunch.

Sheldon Adelson endorsed Trump in spite of Trump’s clear indifference to Israel. Adelson cares about what happens in this country. Israel is but an afterthought.

So beets are sold with huge, bushy tails because people actually eat those tails?? I had no idea and always wondered why I have to drag these tailed beets home only to chop off the tails and throw them in the garbage. Now it turns out that I’ve been wasting something edible for years? Given how often I buy beets (I’m Ukrainian), that’s a huge waste.