Every year we are evaluated in the three areas of professorial accomplishment: teaching, research, and service. Until recently we’d get rated “Excellent, Meritorious, Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory.” These are very easy to understand words in the English language that have an easily accessible meaning. It was very nice to get my evaluation letter every year and scan it for “Excellent, Excellent, Excellent.”

For some unfathomable reason, however, we have ditched this system and have put in its place a cryptic and confusing system of letters and numbers. Instead of Excellent, I’m now rated “L03.” I can, of course, deduce L03’s meaning from the comments that accompany the rating but it’s not in the least rewarding to be told that I’m L03. It’s also not fun to share with others.

“Honey, let’s celebrate! I’m L03 in all categories!”

“Well, I’m not surprised! I always knew you were totally L03.”

I don’t know why this was done but I’ve got my suspicions. And they are not good.

Klara turned 2 months old yesterday. Today we measured her at the pediatrician’s, and she’s very average in terms of size. She’s not uncommonly huge or anything but right there in the middle with other babies her age.

So what I don’t get is how come none of the clothes marked “0-3 months” fit her any longer. I have to dress her in the “3-6 months” outfits, and she does best in the clothes marked “6 months.” They are very loose on her but that’s great because she gets a lot of freedom of movement.

My explanation is that this is a way of getting people to spend more money. Everybody buys a ton of those “0-3 months” outfits before the baby is born but once it arrives it becomes clear that the clothes are too small and have to be ditched.

These days “religious freedom” has come to mean “being a judgmental jerk who is obsessed with policing other people’s lives.”

Klara didn’t let me sleep all night because she was in a playful mood and wanted attention. Then this morning we went to the pediatrician to get Klara’s jabs. During which procedure I experienced such stress that I’m now all hopped up on adrenaline and am furiously cleaning the kitchen.

Klara, in the meanwhile, is happily asleep.

I’m always happy to integrate requested changes into my articles. I can easily accept that other scholars are more knowledgeable or more attentive than I am. What I can’t accept is the extreme naivete of some people.

The novelist I’m analyzing in one of my articles mentioned in an interview that several of the journalists who spoke to him about his novel confessed that the main character sounded so real that they Googled her to see if she was an actual person.

“That can’t be right,” both my reviewers wrote. “Googling is a very primitive way of conducting research. Surely, journalists prepare for interviews in a more responsible way.”

I don’t know how to break it to these idealistic scholars that even Googling something is too onerous for most journalists. We have to be grateful if they try to find out anything at all about their subject.

Love Hillary but she’s consistently weird on the subject of guns. In her campaign against Obama she gave an embarrassing speech about being taught to shoot by her grandpa or whomever and loving guns with an otherworldly passion. And in this campaign she tells us that couple dozen or so guns from Vermont are creating a major crime wave in New York.

I’d rather she dropped the subject altogether because everything she says about it comes out wrong.

I have no idea who Tom Hayden is but his article about switching from supporting Bernie to Hillary is very intelligent and powerful. It’s curious how this obviously very well-informed and brilliant fellow begins to babble incoherently and slip into Pat Buchanan-type childish lisp the moment foreign policy becomes his subject. Other than that, though, great article. I especially liked the part about scary, apocalyptic environmentalists who are repelling supporters with their PETAish craziness.

P.S. And please do check out the comments. A richer collection of proudly stupid people can hardly be found. Or maybe all the comments were written by the same person because they sound so robotic and identical.

Our Office of University Risk Management (yeah, I know, whatever) is asking us to inform them if we are going to travel abroad in the next two years. It also informed us that last year our colleagues traveled to the following countries:

Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Palestine, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, Wales

This is how college professors referred to the countries they visited. 

There are many conspiracy theories about the source of the Panama Papers leak. One of the more prominent theories today blames the CIA. Bradley Birkenfeld is “the most significant financial whistleblower of all time,” and he has opinions about who’s responsible for leaking the Panama Papers rattling financial and political power centers around the world.

Curiously, the Kremlin promotes the same theory. Or not very curiously if one understands how propaganda wars are fought.

There is one yearly task that I dread: finding a lawn-mower. We hire somebody to do the first mowing of the season, and then N does all the mowing himself. I get to call mowers on the phone and I hate doing that because they don’t understand me. At all! My accent defeats them completely, and it’s very frustrating not to be understood in a language that I speak extremely well.

People are so not ready for globalization.