This semester’s book club was pretty much a disaster. We all agreed that Teaching Naked is useless and offensive to our sensibilities as educators. The teaching methodologies offered in that book are supremely unsuited to our students. We don’t cater to spoiled rich babies who demand constant entertainment and are enamored of their costly gadgets. After we expressed our dislike for the book, the discussions kind of came to an end because there wasn’t much else to say.

So for next semester, a very different kind of reading was chosen for the faculty book club. Our book club selections are not made by the faculty. Rather, the books get assigned (based on some mysterious principle) by a single staff member in the Office for Faculty Development. Basically, this staff member decides how to develop the faculty members without seeking any input from said faculty. The book chosen for next semester is Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices. What say you, gentle readers? Should I join the club next semester? 

In 1939 in the USSR, the very first old-age pensions (i.e. social security benefits for retirees) were introduced for representatives of a single profession. What was that profession?

By the 1950s, everybody in the USSR had old-age pensions, except for a single group. That group only got the right to old-age pensions in 1964. What was the profession of the people in this group?

No Googling!

I’m just not made for Facebook, people. I hadn’t visited my Facebook page for months, finally checked it out today, and discovered a series of status updates from a friend:

“On the way to the airport. Feeling devastated.”

“At the airport. Everything comes to an end. That’s the nature of human existence, I guess.”

“On the airplane with a heavy heart.”

“Back home. Let the grieving begin.”

This friend has elderly parents and a brother in a war zone. Obviously, I immediately thought somebody had died and she was grieving the loss. I was about to start expressing my deepest condolences when I saw another status update:

“Vacations are over. Oh well.”

My literal mind just can’t deal.

This is why predatory journals that email you soliciting articles should be avoided:

I can never figure out if the journalists who publish in The New York Times are serious or sarcastic. Here is an example:

At least part of the schism between Republicans and Democrats is based in differing conceptions of the role of the individual. We find these differences expressed in the frequent heated arguments about crucial issues like health care and immigration. In a broad sense, Democrats, particularly the more liberal among them, are more likely to embrace the communal nature of individual lives and to strive for policies that emphasize that understanding. Republicans, especially libertarians and Tea Party members on the ideological fringe, however, often trace their ideas about freedom and liberty back to Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries, who argued that the individual is the true measure of human value, and each of us is naturally entitled to act in our own best interests free of interference by others.

Republicans and Tea Partiers as defenders of Enlightened values would make sense as part of a comedy routine. However, I’m not seeing huge respect for individual rights in the Republican Big Brother policies of extreme state intrusion into every aspect of citizens’ lives, including their internal organs and their beds.

As somebody who specializes on the Enlightenment, I fail to see even a minimal overlap between the Enlightened philosophy of the XVIIIth century and anything whatsoever in the Republican platform. Enlightened thinkers, for instance, lived and died for the separation between church and state. The entire era of the Enlightenment is one enormous attempt at liberating human beings from the shackles of religion. 

What a stupid newspaper, seriously.

The military invasion of Ukraine didn’t,  on the whole, work for Russia. Save for the Crimean Peninsula and the Donetsk/Lugansk regions – two economically undeveloped and dependent regions, nothing has been gained after months of hostilities. The piss – poor Ukraine and its degraded, almost non-existent army worked a miracle and beat back the seasoned, heavily armed Russian troops.

None of this means, however, that Russia will abandon its goal of destroying Ukraine. A decision has been made to take the road of economic sabotage against Ukraine. The country is on the verge of  an economic collapse as it is. Plus, the Americans said that they won’t help out until they see massive economic reforms in Ukraine.

This means that now Ukrainians have to work an even greater miracle. They need to make their economy function. And as improbable as it sounds, in the face of the existential threat they are facing, they just might pull it off.

This might still prove to be  the best thing that ever happened to Ukraine. As Comrade Mao used to say, “There is great chaos under heaven: the situation is excellent.”

Is Putin Bankrolling Le Pen’s Campaign? http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/11/30/is-putin-bankrolling-le-pens-campaign/

A law-abiding, tax-paying Canadian homeowner writes:

So, I spoke with a lawyer and turns out that indeed government bureaucrats are allowed to enter a house (even without owners present, as long as someone opens the door) & take pictures as they please! If they show up & no one opens the door, they are allowed to return with police who can forcefully open the door to let them in. No heads up required!

I no longer see any reason to hold on to my Canadian passport. Maybe I will have to spend the rest of my life emigrating, but it’s all good as long as I emigrate away from what’s described in the quote.

Once it’s OK for a cop to feel like a 5-year-old child at the sight of an unarmed teenager, it’s got to be OK to flip out during an encounter with a scary banana:

The deputies, Joshua Bunch and Donald Love, said they feared for their safety when the man, 27-year-old Nathan Rolf Channing, pointed a banana at them while crossing the 29 Road bridge on foot, according to Channing’s arrest affidavit.

Both deputies said they saw that the “gun” was yellow, but feared for their lives nonetheless, the affidavit says.

“I immediately ducked in my patrol car and accelerated continuing northbound, fearing that it was a weapon,” Bunch wrote in the affidavit, which lists Love and him as victims. “Based on training and experience, I have seen handguns in many shapes and colors and perceived this to be a handgun.”

I guess, these brave law enforcement officers should be awarded medals for managing to keep their cool in the face of the horrifying, threatening banana and not shooting up the neighborhood to protect their valiant lives.

Switzerland’s anti-immigration bill that masked as environmental concern has been overwhelmingly rejected by voters:

Voters in Switzerland have decisively rejected a proposal to cut net immigration to no more than 0.2% of the population.

The country’s 26 cantons rejected the proposal, with about 74% of people voting no in Sunday’s referendum.

I’m interested in this bill because I have a feeling that nobody will do anything about the legitimate climate change issues but there will be numerous attempts to sneak all kinds of super ridiculous policies by the voters under the guise of environmental concerns.

The reason why voters rejected the Ecopop proposal is, of course, the new liquid economy:

Opponents, among them all the major political parties, argued that the proposals would be bad for the economy because business leaders wanted to be able to recruit skilled labour from across Europe.