I found a new magazine at the newsstand,  skimmed the first page and found a “this is the worst year in the recorded history, the news are too depressing,  apocalypse is looming” editorial.

“Ah, a Liberal magazine! ” I concluded and gladly bought it.

The magazine,  however, turned out to be as conservative as they come,  offering a painfully long and weird discussion on what makes one a real Jew, a disturbingly accurate analysis of Obama ‘ s foreign policy, an undeniably true assessment of the Democrat voters as having given up on the possibility that their politicians will ever give them anything but gay marriage, and a hilarious account of John Kerry ‘ s doomed efforts to negotiate between Israel and Palestine. There is even a timid joke about Sarah Palin. Of course, this is all peppered with a heavy dose of the boring Fox New-style rhetoric but if you look past that,  the journal is very enjoyable.

The Good:

A very good, thoughtful article on the differences between the expensive, prestigious schools and less famous, cheaper schools. 

Mainstream journalism is not dead yet: here is a very impressive article on white poverty.

Putin has one fatal flaw: he longs to be loved and can’t stand being disliked. Here is how Ukrainian and Byelorussian soccer fans are exploiting this issue of his.

A cutie-cute Windows ’95 backpack.

I won’t read Pollitt’s book on abortion (I don’t waste time reading books that tell me what I already agree with) but the review is great: “In other words, trying to be compassionate, to give anti-choicers the benefit of the doubt, has only resulted in progressives failing to make their own case. We’re dealing, Pollitt says, with “40 years of apologetic rhetoric, 40 years of searching for arguments that will support legal abortion while never, ever implying that it is an easy decision or a good thing,” and this has only gotten us stuck “making the same limited, defensive arguments again and again.”

“The earnings penalty for overweight (and underweight!) men isn’t due to simple discrimination. Men who become overweight as adults face no special career penalty. It’s only a problem for men who become overweight as teenagers.” Which means that there is no discrimination for overweight people on the job market. People who grow up in psychologically unhealthy, unstable environment are traumatized to the point where their job performance in adulthood suffers. Weight is nothing but a symptom here.

A hilarious list of idiotic things bosses often say. Which ones have you heard uttered aloud or implied?

I have never heard anti-Semitism being defined as “a form of collectivism, a subordination of the individual to the group” but it’s a very interesting definition. There is a lot here to work with.

“In many fields and for many positions — insurance claims clerks, executive secretaries, many human resources roles, and the people who supervise mechanics and installers — employers are growing much more inclined to try to replace workers who do not have bachelor’s degrees with employees who do.” If you ever meet any high-school graduates, you will understand that employers are doing the only thing they can reasonably do.

Truly fantastic advice for beginning teachers. Highly recommended.

And a great post with teaching advice for more seasoned educators.

Some very valuable observations on trickle-down feminism.

A great post denouncing scabs and scabbiness.

A brilliant put-down of the infamous “Foodies are Eating Mommies” article. I was going to write about this but the linked blogger did it better than I ever could. My only gripe with the post is the repeated use of the word “help” in the penultimate paragraph. Here is why.

The Bad:

I like Martha Nussbaum but I think I’m too young to understand what this essay is about. Maybe my older readers will appreciate but I’m just puzzled by this strange collection of words.

If anything could cure one of an envy for models, look at the artwork Dalí created with models’ bodies.

The post is good but the news it delivers is disappointing: I was really looking forward to seeing that movie but after this review, there is no way I’m coming near this film.

An extremely stupid article on feminism. The author obviously has absolutely nothing to say on the subject, so she decided to go on and on at length about not having much to say. For somebody who accuses a movement of triviality, this journalist is too eager to throw stones from her own glass house.

You’ve really got to be a total loser to plagiarize somebody’s online course. How do people live with themselves, knowing that they are so useless and pathetic that they can’t even design a silly online course on their own?

Has Germany found a new way to wage war on Europe?

God, there are some stupid young people in the world. Articles like these make me very appreciative of my students because I can’t even begin to imagine them being so pompous, verbose, and dim.

Facebook will try to compete with PayPal. Like anybody is stupid enough to give their bank account details to Facebook. Why not just withdraw the money and flush it down the toilet instead?

The Ugly:

If people are still wondering why I say that the climate-change movement has been hijacked by psychos, they need to read this article on what we can do to address climate change. Every suggestion on the list is a gem, but the following rises to level of plain scary: “After you’ve read about the crisis, let yourself feel grief. Don’t ignore your feelings, either through resignation or through forced optimism. Feel what you feel. Talk about your feelings with your family and friends.” It’s because of these crazies that the climate-change movement is achieving nothing. They are scaring normal people away. Please read the whole list before you argue. Pay careful attention to point 1.

What are people even thinking when they concoct the followings sentences: “Old privilege attacking new privilege, which does nothing to help the underprivileged.” The same article contains the phrase: “The shackles of our corporate masters have been cast off for a few precious hours, and we’re going to make the most of it”, and I didn’t get a feeling the author was being entirely facetious. I should have known that an article called “Brunch-Shaming” would be stupid.

“Women’s life expectancy without men would rise to 130 years at least. PIV would be illegal too of course, as well as the initiation of any verbal or physical contact to women and girls or boy children, unless solicited by a woman for specific matters.” Yes, but 130 of life without PIV is complete torture for the absolute majority of women on this planet. Why should they be punished for the fantasies of a few strange folks?

Few things are creepier than the concept of “private prisons.” This is a practice that is so wrong it shames me we are tolerating it.

“Among other things, majorities of Muslims – varying somewhat according to region – favor putting to death apostates and adulterers, condemn homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia as immoral, and believe that “a wife must obey her husband.”  Large minorities condone “honor killings.”  It should be noted that for practical reasons, the Pew Center could not survey Muslims in the repressive, highly conservative Gulf States (including Saudi Arabia, the homeland of Wahhabism).”

So my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 arrived and it’s ENORMOUS. It’s as big as my head, almost. It is so funny how just a few years ago everybody wanted their phone to be as tiny as possible, and now it has all gone in the opposite direction. Now it’s prestigious for a phone to be closer in size to a tablet.

I don’t know what I will do now with my smallish handbags because this phone will not fit in them. I hope that, at least, blogging will be easy from the new phone. It has a small pen, and all. I will feel very chic with this phone.

People ask me how I manage to do so much research. My secret is my tiny notebook and my autistic brain. I have these tiny notebooks that I take everywhere with me:

Whenever there is a moment (at a dentist’s, at the restaurant when my companion goes to the bathroom, etc), I whip the notebook out and write my article.

Right now I have done some good, useful writing for the first chapter of my new book during a departmental meeting:

The magical part is that I can actively participate in a meeting, make comments, argue, etc while writing my book. The two activities don’t interfere with each other.

I have finally had a moment to open my newsfeed, and this is what I found:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, you’ve probably heard about the Ben Affleck/Bill Maher/Sam Harris scuffle on Maher’s show Real Time.

I’ve been totally living under a rock because there’s been too much work this week. Can anybody update me on what happened? Also, what is this I’m hearing about another killing of a black man in St. Louis? Does anybody know what’s been going on? Are there any other news I’ve missed?

This is proving to be the hardest semester ever. Please inform me of the important events in the news if you want to spare yourselves some whining about my difficult semester. Remember, I’m an academic, I can outwhine anybody!

Yet another unknown French guy is given the Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel is becoming more pathetic and irrelevant by the minute. Who are all these nameless, reader less folks who have been honored with the prize in the recent years?

The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you outright that you’re unstable, otherwise you wouldn’t believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative. You’re oversensitive. You’re imagining things. You’re hysterical. You’re completely unreasonable. You’re over-reacting, like you always do. She’ll talk to you when you’ve calmed down and aren’t so irrational. She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psychotic.

Once she’s constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, she’ll tell others about them, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her own helpless victimhood. She didn’t do anything. She has no idea why you’re so irrationally angry with her. You’ve hurt her terribly. She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesn’t know what to do. You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you.

I broke contact with my mother after her pathological and destructive behavior towards me and my husband on the day before the anniversary of our son’s death. To me, this was just the last straw in a relationship filled with abuse, hurt, humiliation, control, and pain. What I find completely hilarious in the midst of the situation, though, is that I know for a fact that today, yesterday, the day before, and so on, my mother is repeating “Clarissa’s hurt me terribly. I love her very much and would do anything to make her happy, but I just don’t know what to do. She keeps pushing me away when all I want to do is help her” to everybody who would listen.

She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that it’s something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the doting mother so perfectly that no one will believe you.

For the first time ever, I doubted my choice of profession. This happened after I saw people in Spain protesting against the killing of the dog belonging to an ebola-infected woman.

I never doubted that Spain’s culture deserved to be preserved and cherished. I also never doubted this great culture would not be consigned to oblivion by history. Today, these certainties took a hit.

After another epic battle with AT&T, I finally wrangled a new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 from the company’s iron grip. They have gotten much better at haggling since my last battle with them. But I’ve been honing my skills as well, so I emerged victorious.

The battle lasted for over two hours and I was redirected five times. I promise you that the men in customer service and client retention (most of whom were called Charles) will wake up in the middle of the night, screaming my name and the last four digits of my SSN in terror. And I will have a nervous breakdown every time I hear the the word AT&T. But at least I have my new free phone.

As I told my students on Monday, capital follows its own logic and that logic is implacable, relentless, and indifferent to human emotion. And as I wrote in my new book on Tuesday, the most ruthless will win only to be crushed down by an even greater display of ruthlessness.