Gosh, Latin American studies are so dead. I read stuff published within the last 3 years, and there’s nothing but the same tired old ideas I was taught 20 years ago as an undergrad based on the sources from the 1970s.

Nothing is sadder than a field of knowledge that has discovered THE TRUTH and has nothing else to do but endlessly repeat it. 

What I love about our area is how reliable our local bunnies are. 

Whenever Klara begins to get cranky or uncooperative, I tell her, “Let’s go outside and look at bunnies!” She’s big enough to understand that bunnies are fun, so she’s always happy to go look at them. And bunnies have never let me down. They are always there when we come out. They let us come very close, and Klara is so cute when she tries to be as quiet as possible to avoid scaring them.  

These days, the candidates who are more desperate to raise money are the ones who’ll lose. So this is a very good sign. 

Folks, here is a great article on the use of the term racism. The first half is too verbose and a bit belabored but the second half is great. Note that the author uses the same definition of Liberalism as the one I discussed recently, as a revolutionary understanding of the basic humanity of everybody. 

A Dean at Yale was fired when students discovered she’d posted “insensitive reviews” on Yelp and the entire student body started having fainting fits.

Hey, I guess I’m never getting hired by Yale given the way I write on my blog.  

Inside Higher Ed, on the other hand, is a reliable bunch of laughs every time. Please see following and remember that this is a college professor writing:

In complimenting someone on their hair or how they look in a certain outfit, it sends the message that appearance matters and implies that when you do not offer a compliment, it might be a day when you do not look as well. Also, moments focused on image steals away time when we could talk about what someone thinks, or how someone’s day went.

Do read the rest. It’s just as rewarding in its sheer lunacy as the quote. And the command of the language is priceless. 

So I’m at home with Klara until her HFMD clears. The bad part is that I can’t take her to any of the places where we normally like to go (the children’s museum, the bookstore’s kid corner, the playgrounds) because this virus is very contagious. So I have to entertain her at home or in depopulated areas. And she’s unwell, so she needs every ounce of my attention and more. 

Unlike many kids with this virus, she hasn’t lost her appetite, so I need to find the time to cook for her. And for us. And prepare N’s lunches that he takes to work. Plus, I can’t just suspend all work on my article. I’m on a deadline, and nobody will wait for me to finish. 

Plus, I’m in the midst of a home-improvement project that entails people coming to the house to do work.

Plus, I’m in a health-management program (diabetes prevention) and I need to see doctors.

All this means that I need to plan everything extra carefully to make sure I manage to do everything in the small pockets of time when Klara is asleep or with N. I’m literally desperate for a few minutes here and there to do stuff that needs to be done. 

And then I go to Chronicle of Higher Ed and see people bitch about the intolerable hardship of having too much free time on their hands in the summer and fret about pronouns. Dumb fuckers.

Success doesn’t mean you have no more problems. It means you have problems of a higher order. 

“In Morocco, for instance, 71 percent of men said women enjoyed sexual harassment, but only 42 percent of women agreed. Only 20 percent of Egyptian women said women enjoyed harassment, but 43 percent of men said they did.”

And in Latin America and the FSU countries the results will be even worse. So let’s keep that in mind. 

What I wish I could see one days is Gender Studies departments abandoning their rueful navel-gazing for a moment and figuring out what helped solve this problem in North America and how this recipe could be exported at least into the countries that are desperate to be seen as part of the civilized West. 

Mental health is inextricably linked to the capacity to concentrate on the current moment when times are good and moving to a long-term perspective when they are bad.