Visit Length

Since people say they don't mind posts on blog stats, there is an interesting fact I just discovered:

12.5% of people who visit the blog stay for over an hour

I hope this isn't because people are confused, but rather because they read one thing and then get interested and read more. Or just stick around for the sake of the discussions in the comments section.

Black Swan: A Review

The saddest thing is that this could have been a really good movie. The story, the directing, the photography, the supporting cast were very impressive. The beautiful music obviously didn't hurt. This could have been a powerful work that pondered issues of artistic awakening and the nature of creativity, a Künstlerroman in the true meaning of the word. This could have really worked. Could have - if it weren't for the imponderable decision to cast the Queen of Vapid, a.k.a. Natalie Portman, in the leading role.

For some incomprehensible reason, Portman is in vogue right now. Every other movie out there is rendered horrible by her insipid presence and annoying lisp. Portman has two facial expressions in her arsenal: blank face with her mouth closed and blank face with her mouth half-open. Every single emotion is conveyed by either mouth closed or mouth half-open. I don't know how she manages to keep her facial muscles in such a rigid state at all times: Botox? facial paralysis? natural vacuousness? Whatever it is, this peculiarity incapacitates her completely as an actress. She looks down, sees a shard of glass sticking out of her belly, mouth half-opens, a blank stare: what on Earth is she thinking? Good? Bad? Fun? Painful? Something? Anything?

The entire experience of watching Black Swan is poisoned by the need to guess what emotions Portman's character is supposed to be conveying. Trying to deduce anything from her frozen face and vapid stare is beyond painful. The scenes where Portman appears against Mila Kunis make her look even more pathetic. Kunis is no actress of the century but at least there is some acting capacity there (Ukrainians rule!). Kunis simply kills Portman in every single scene.

An alternative reading of the film is that Portman's character is supposed to be so overworked and exhausted by starvation and endless purging that she has no energy to experience, let alone express, any emotion. I wish I had been informed of this interpretation before I watched the movie. Then, I might have avoided the constant and fatiguing attempts to guess the character's feelings and intentions. I still believe, however, that the truth here is that Portman is simply devoid of any acting talent whatsoever.

Don't Buy Into Amazon's Political Scam! Termination of Amazon Affiliates Program

If you are part of Amazon's Associates Program, you might have received the following e-mail recently:

Greetings from the Amazon Associates Program:

We regret to inform you that the Illinois state legislature has passed an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that, if signed by Governor Quinn, would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with Illinois-based Associates. You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of Illinois. If our records are incorrect, you can manage the details of your Associates account here.

Please note that this not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Amazon Associates Program. But if the governor signs this bill, we will need to terminate the participation of all Illinois residents in the Associates Program. After that point, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for sales referred to amazon.com, endless.com and smallparts.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Illinois residents.
The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on Illinois residents like you were explained to the legislature, including Senate and House leadership, as well as to the governor's staff.

Over a dozen other states have considered essentially identical legislation but have rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states' residents.

Governor Quinn's office may be reached here.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you continued success in the future.

Sincerely,

Amazon.com

Now, what's really happening is the following. The state of Illinois (where I happen to live) is broke. Governor Quinn is trying to cover our enormous budget deficits through measures he had announced in his election campaign. One of such measures is removing the unfair advantage on-line retailers have over other sellers and making them pay sales tax, just like everybody else:

Illinois lawmakers have passed what's been dubbed the "Amazon tax." It's not a new tax; it's just a way to collect money that's already due the state. The legislation forces online retailers like Amazon and overstock.com to collect the state's six and a quarter percent sales tax on purchases. Smaller businesses support the measure, saying online retailers who don't collect the state sales have an advantage over them. The legislation now goes to the Governor's desk for approval.

Here is more on this new tax and how it's supposed to work:

The law would require Internet retailers that sell through affiliates in Illinois, and which sell at least $10,000 each year to Illinois residents, to collect the taxes, says a spokesman for state Senate president John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat backing the bill. “The bill treats online merchants more like bricks-and-mortar merchants,” the spokesman says. “The retailer would be responsible for collecting the tax.” He notes that the bill covers only online retailers that have affiliates in Illinois in an effort to satisfy a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says only web merchants that have a presence within a given state must collect taxes there. The spokesman could give no estimate about how much Illinois might collect from such a tax, but, previously, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Revenue told Internet Retailer the state could recoup $150 million annually from the use tax.

Now the Amazon is trying to manipulate members of its Associates program to apply political pressure on the Governor. The company doesn't give a rat's ass whether this state goes completely bankrupt, whether its schools close and the roads crumble down. Amazon doesn't believe that it has to pay taxes just like everybody else. Let's not let this company manipulate us into undermining our own state! In the 1,5 years that I have lived in Illinois, I have come to love this great state. I want to see it prosper and flourish. And if Amazon doesn't care about the residents of this state, we should.

I am a member of Amazon Associates program. Obviously, I don't want to be denied access to the program. However, I realize that there are more important things at stake here. I will be writing a letter to Governor Quinn today, urging him to pass this legislation and expressing my support for his efforts to cover the deficit through these practical measures. Friends, don't let Amazon manipulate you! The citizens of Illinois have spoken and elected Governor Quinn. Now we should let him do his job. And Amazon can go kill itself against a wall, as we say in my culture. If they want to lose all the profit its Illinois Associates bring them just because they are too greedy to pay a sales tax, so be it.

Where Do Most of the Visitors Come From?

In case anybody is interested, here is a list of countries that send the greatest number of visitors to this blog. The numbers are since May 2010 until now because this stat counter didn't work before that date:

United States                                            72,470

Canada                                                      11,607
United Kingdom                                          8,452
Australia                                                      3,632
Germany                                                      3,025
Netherlands                                                 1,304
India                                                             1,194
Norway                                                            805
Israel                                                               627
Russia                                                              401

Now we can see which countries have the greatest number of true intellectuals. :-) I understand every country on this list except Netherlands. I mean, it's a great country and everything but I never even mentioned it on the blog. Maybe I should start writing about Netherlands, though, to recognize all those intelligent Dutch visitors.

I'm sorry if this is boring to everybody but I'm fascinated with numbers. Everything has to be counted and then pondered. :-) Something a lot more fun is to come, though. I'm going to the movies to see Black Swan tonight, so a review is forthcoming.

Contemporary Spanish Literature on Kindle

I had despaired of seeing contemporary Spanish authors appear in Kindle format. When I first got the KIndle, I used to enter Juan Goytisolo and Rosa Montero in the search line all the time. Soon I realized, though, that it was all in vain. Due to copyright restrictions, all we had accessible on Kindle were Spanish classics which had no copyright issues.

So last night I entered "Juan Goytisolo" in the search box just on reflex. And guess what? There is a whole collection of contemporary Spanish (and even some Latin American) writers that has appeared on Kindle. And the collection keeps growing. This happened some time late Fall when I was too exhausted by my weird schedule to notice anything around.  

You should have seen the state I was in at 3 am last night when I discovered these books on Kindle. My heart started racing, I was short of breath, and there were tears in my eyes.  Now I know what people who have won the lottery must feel. If you think that such a reaction to having these books within one's easy reach is exaggerated, then you don't know what it is to be a specialist in contemporary Spanish literature in North America. Whenever a new book by the author you specialize in is released, you either have to order it from Europe (insanely expensive and takes forever to get delivered), guilt trip your friends or colleagues who are travelling to Spain into bringing it back for you, wait until you get to travel to Spain yourself, or (and this is what I do more often than not) just sit there waiting for it to appear on Amazon while dying of curiosity and feelings of professional irrelevance.

The writers some of whose novels are now available on Kindle are: Juan Goytisolo (mostly his early fiction and essays for now), Juan Marse (two titles at this point), Carme Riera, Eduardo Mendoza, Rosa Montero, Miguel Delibes, Bryce Echenique, Alicia Gimenez Bartlett, Manuel Vazquez Montalban, Miguel Angel Asturias, Camilo Jose Cela, Terenci Moix, and others. The books are all quite cheap, ranging in price between $4 and $7. Anybody who has tried buying books by these authors in paper format (especially in North America) must be weeping with joy right now. Even if you are lucky enough to locate the book you need, it will cost you upwards of $20 plus shipping. There is a great store of Spanish-language literature in Montreal, which can locate and ship any book to you anywhere in Canada or the US. The amount you will have to pay for it, though, will terrify you. Now that these books have started appearing on Kindle - and quite cheaply, too, - this problem will be solved.

Now, the important part: how to find them? All you have to do is enter "Leer-e" (the name of the publishing house that makes the books available on Kindle) in the search box. I have a feeling that they will be bringing us a lot more books in the nearest future, so this is definitely a search that needs to be made often. Another good search for books in Spanish is "Digitalia", although their selection is not as exciting or cheap as Leer-e's.

Happy reading!

Boys Don't Cry but Girls Should?

OK, what's the big deal with Boehner crying? Why am I getting all these tweets with nasty quips about him crying like it's the most important political event of the month? I remember when Hillary Clinton teared up during her campaign because of a bout of self-pity, her ratings shot up. So what's up with making fun of Boehner? I like dumping on his politics as much as the next person, but his crying has nothing to do with it. Some people cry more easily than others. It's a physiological thing, which has nothing to do with gender. It is kind of nasty to use it to reinforce silly and offensive gender stereotypes.

Ever Seen This Computer?

Does anybody know anything about this computer? Namely, Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q890 TruBrite 18.4-Inch Laptop (Black/Red)? I'm looking for something that will be like a stationary laptop, so it doesn't matter if it's heavy, I'm not planning to move it around much. I will need to make and edit many audio and video recordings, multi-media presentations, and do a lot of on-line stuff on it (e.g. teaching a blended course). It needs to be VERY fast, that's crucial. It can't be one of those things that takes an eternity to load.

If anybody has any information about it (either positive or negative), please share.

P.S. I just heard that it might be better to buy a Dell. What I need, though, is not a simple computer but a total animal. I have never heard a Dell being described as an animal, so it just doesn't sound right for this purpose.

Ready for New Semester

For some strange reason I can't explain, I came to the office today. I only have to start teaching next Tuesday but I've missed my office so much that I couldn't keep away from it any longer. I'm weird, I know, but having a place of employment where you actually want to be is something that still hasn't lost its magic for me. (When we get our new, super comfortable and fashionable office furniture this spring, there will be no dragging me out of here at all).

A few nice surprises greeted my arrival:

1. My computer didn't crash. Although it somehow turned itself on over the holidays. But as long as it didn't crash (like last winter), I'm happy.

2. The Associate Dean wrote a truly glowing evaluation of a lecture of mine he attended. I knew I was good, but I had no idea I was that good.

3. Something has been done to make the floors in our building super clean and shiny (as you can see in the picture). It won't last long, but at least I'll have a photo of it.

I have actually managed to do a lot of important stuff today:

A. Learned how to back-up this blog.
B. Started working on a grant application which I usually hate. But it's not that bad this time.
C. Did research on blended learning (which is what the grant is for.)
D. Returned books that have been overdue for a while.
E. Printed out the list of books I have read in 2010 (of which there were 70, in case anybody is curious) with their summaries and ratings.

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Abuzz

A poor student wronged by mean, horrible me has been inundating everybody with complaints. According to him, I gave him a failing grade (which caused him to be expelled from the university) just for (note the wording here) plagiarizing. The entire university is abuzz with worry. Oh, our poor baby! How could this have happened to him? Is it fair to expel a student just for plagiarizing?

Of course, what the badly used student forgot to mention is that:

• he missed 11 out of 28 class meetings;
• he didn't participate in class discussions a single time;
• he got a grade of zero for every single written in-class assignment;
• he didn't show up for two out of 4 mini-quizzes;
• he didn't show up for two out of three exams;
• he failed the final exam;
• he failed to turn in one of the papers;
• the only two papers he did turn in were copy-pasted from the Internet.

So how could he have possibly failed this course??

Censoring Mark Twain

I'm sure many of you have heard by now about the professor at Auburn-Montgomery who has decided it was up to him to improve Mark Twain's classic works of fiction:

A Montgomery publisher and the AUM professor who edited out more than 200 uses of a racially derogatory term in a new edition of Mark Twain’s "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" say they’re not surprised that they’re coming under fire in some quarters. . . But Gribben, who has studied and taught Twain for 40 years, changed his mind as he toured the state a few years ago reading to audiences from "Tom Sawyer" as part of the NEA’s Big Read program. He’d routinely replace the n-word -- used 219 times in "Huck Finn" and nine times in "Tom Sawyer," he said -- with the word "slave," which he has done in NewSouth Books’ new combined edition of the two works. In addition, the word "Injun" is replaced with Indian.

Of course, the hapless academic who says Mark Twain could have been a much better writer had he only seeked his much needed advice on how to write novels, explains his actions as serving the greater good. As long as censorship has existed, it has always been done with the best intentions in mind, so this case is no exception:

"We were very aware that we were doing something that was potentially very provocative and controversial," NewSouth publisher Suzanne La Rosa said. "We were very persuaded by Dr. Gribben’s point of view of what he called the amount of ‘preemptive censorship’ going on at the school level. It pained him personally to see ... the way that Twain’s novels were being de-listed from curricula across the nation. It became difficult for teachers to engage in discussion about the text when the kids were so uncomfortable, particularly with the n-word."

What Gribben's publisher is saying here is that since there are so many unprofessional, ignorant teachers out there, it was the publisher's job to cater to them by improving classical works of literature to the point where such ignorant teachers will find it easy to teach them. Of course, censors always believe that everybody else is a lot more impressionable and feeble-minded than they are. Both Gribben and his publisher have read the original novels by Twain and somehow managed to survive this traumatic experience. Still, they think that others cannot be trusted to choose their own ways of interacting with a famous text. 

This is why I keep saying that conservative fanaticism isn't much different from progressive fanaticism. A fanatic always knows better, always itches to control everybody else, is always unforgivingly dogmatic. The vector of a fanatic's orthodoxy is not important. Whatever their political convictions might turn out to be, fanatics will end up in the same place: attempting to impose a rigid structure of control on everybody around them.

I have a few suggestions for Gribben, who insists that his edition offers readers "a more palatable reading experience." This hack, who is so concerned with our delicate palates getting too overworked, might now consider the following projects:

1. Rewriting the ending of Anna Karenina: how about if at the end of the novel, Anna decides not to kill herself? Instead, she starts her own business selling blouses in Saratov, sues her husband for custody and alimony and realizes how empowering it is too be a financially independent woman.

2. Redoing Mrs. Dalloway is also long overdue. How about the following denouement: Mrs. Dalloway realizes that her housewifely existence is shallow and unfulfilling. She decides to explore her sexuality freely and openly and moves into a gay community in San Francisco. The novel ends with her organizing political action in favor of gay marriage.

3. Let's be honest, Cervantes really messed up with his Don Quijote. This whole master-servant relationship between Don Quijote and Sancho promotes a demeaning class structure, which should have no place in such a famous book. How about rewriting it to show Sancho Panza organizing a union to fight for the rights of servants everywhere?

Do you have any favorite classics that are in need of improvement? Let's help Professor Gribben find a new project!

What's the Difference Between Fox News and MSNBC?

I don't think I need to explain why I think Fox News is an insult to the very concept of journalism. There is no reporting they offer, just poorly presented propaganda. I have written about Fox News before and don't find it necessary to repeat myself. Today, however, I caught myself in a realization that I dislike MSNBC just as much and for the same reasons.

As a progressively-minded individual I am supposed to like MSNBC and use them as one of my main news sources. And I honestly tried to join my fellow liberals in their love for this channel. Of course, there is no doubt in my mind that Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Keith Olbermann and Co are better human beings and more intelligent journalists than Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, and all those other screamers from Fox News. But the journalism these people with opposing political views end up producing is, in my opinion, of equally low quality.

I can't applaud any journalist who faithfully reiterates the party line with a single-minded abandon of a religious fanatic and without questioning any part of said party agenda. I can't do it even when the party line in question coincides with my own political beliefs. "The-Democrats-are-the-anti-Christ" agenda of Fox News is just as disappointing in its simplistic attitude to reality as the MSNBC's "the-Republicans-are-the-anti-Christ" spiel.  

Let's take Rachel Maddow, for example. I admire her a lot because it's impossible not to when seeing somebody so talented, beautiful, charming, and articulate. But has anybody noticed how much she has in common with Bill O'Reilly? Their politics are as different as night and day, of course, but their journalistic methods are eerily similar. It took me a while to notice this because as somebody who agrees with Maddow's politics, I am very inclined to admire her no matter what. Still, the more I watched her show on MSNBC, the more convinced I became that I'd already seen all these tricks somewhere else: the endless repetitions of very simple sentences of undisputed ideological power, the body language, the raised voice that keeps going up and up to accompany statements that become more simplified with each reiteration, an unwavering, fanatical party allegiance*. I knew I'd seen all that before. Finally, I couldn't keep hiding this from myself much longer: Maddow and O'Reilly have a lot more in common than their differing political view-points might lead us to expect.

I am convinced that progressive fanaticism is just as dangerous and scary as its conservative counterpart. There is nothing more terrifying than an unthinking agreement with any political agenda, irrespective of how attractive this particular agenda might look. Any thinking individual will unavoidably find him or herself in disagreement over a variety of subjects even with their closest allies. Intelligence always looks for its own way. Conformity is an impossible proposition for anybody who values their own intellectual independence. No promise of future political change can justify renouncing the right to one's own point of view.

This is why it's sad to see that these two major news stations have abandoned any attempt at real journalism in favor of spreading propaganda and ideological simplifications. Of course, that's easier than offering profound analysis, original thinking, difficult questions. Who needs to go to all that trouble when you can just repeat the same tired old mantras that the public is likely to eat up for lack of anything better anyways?

* Yes, this is just my opinion, like everything else on this blog (see the blog's header.) It will be fantastic if people avoid stating this very obvious fact of objective reality in the comments.

John Lescroart's Damage: A Review

In case you don't know, John Lescroart is the author of a great courtroom drama series set in San Francisco. Unlike Grisham, who also writes best-selling courtroom dramas, Lescroart actually knows how to write a good sentence in English. For those who love San Francisco (and how is it possible not to love this magical city?), Lescroart's novels will be especially interesting to read. Even if your vision of San Francisco is different from Lescroart's, you can't fail to find his admiration for the city to be infectious.

Lescroart became famous as the creator of the Hardy / Glitsky series featuring Dismas Hardy, a lawyer, and his best friend Abe Glitsky, a police officer. Both Hardy and Glitsky are complex, interesting characters who are often tortured and always far from perfect. A little while ago, Lescroart must have decided that the Hardy / Glitsky series had played itself out and came up with a new protagonist for a new series: Wyatt Hunt. The resulting The Hunt Club, Treasure Hunt (Wyatt Hunt), and A Plague of Secrets were so weak that they almost made me abandon this writer for good. With the Wyatt Hunt character, Lescroart committed what is a huge mistake for such an experienced author: he created a protagonist who is so perfect as to be completely disgusting. Wyatt Hunt is an athlete, a musician, an investigator and a know-it-all whose favorite things to do are to save damsels in distress and rescue abused children under dramatic circumstances. In order to make him even more attractive, Lescroart surrounded him with extremely pathetic characters whose goal was to present Hunt with even more opportunities to shine.

Tonight, however, Lescroart finally released a novel that lives up to his erstwhile standards. Damage finally abandons the inane goody-two-shoes of Wyatt Hunt and his coterie of helpless losers and focuses on Lescroart's trademark characters Abe Glitsky and the hippie lawyer turned District Attorney Wes Farrell. (Hardy's fans need to be forewarned that Hardy appears only briefly in Damage.)

I had pre-ordered this novel on Kindle several months ago. Yesterday, I stayed up until 2 am (the time when Amazon sends out pre-ordered new releases) because I couldn't keep waiting any longer to see how this novel would turn out. Then, I couldn't sleep because I just needed to read it. Today, I'm happy to report that the novel is definitely worth all that trouble. It's really good. There are great courtroom scenes which, however, are not excessive. There is a mystery that keeps you in suspense until the end (although, I have to confess that I guessed some of it. Still, that's not surprising given the extent of my familiarity with this author's books.) There are personal dramas, power struggles, corruption, and truly memorable characters. In short, this is one of Lescroart's best novels, and this is saying a lot with such a prolific and gifted author.

A Ban on Mini-Skirts and Pseudo-Liberals

This sad news from Sri Lanka made me wonder how soon we will see protests against the corrupting presence of mini-skirts on the streets of North-American cities from Sri Lankan immigrant communities:

Sri Lanka was mulling a ban on miniskirts following complaints, prompting the government to set up a panel to prepare a dress code for public places in the conservative country, officials said. “There are individuals and groups representing religious and cultural interests, who have written to us raising concerns that this kind of (mini) dress would corrupt our culture,” minister T B Ekanayake was quoted as saying by the Lakbima news daily.

After a mid-schooler in Canada was allowed to carry a dagger to school because it was ruled a part of his national costume while fundamentalist Muslim and Jewish women lobbied (and almost won) for pregnant women to be prevented from bringing their husbands to secular birth preparation classes in Montreal, I will not be surprised to see any government of a Western country entertain its own ban on "corrupting" women's clothes as a gesture of appeasement to some immigrant community which considers women to be less than human.

If quasi-liberals continue with their tradition of condescending "tolerance" towards each cannibalistic and savage tradition out there, their efforts, coupled with those of our own home-grown woman-haters, will bring something like this to happen here, too. Of course, I am not disputing the right of Sri Lankan people to engage in any kind of barbarity towards the women of their country. I am, however, hoping to preserve the very small oasis of female liberation that came into existence in a very small portion of the world's territory.

In a gesture of a contemptuous dismissal of other cultures, we are schooled by certain groups of pseudo-progressives never to question any of the practices those other cultures engage in. As I said many times before, such an attitude does not signal respect for the Other. Just the opposite. A refusal to question, to judge, to pronounce opinions stems from a profound conviction that representatives of other cultures are not as human as we are. Hence, they don't deserve to be judged according to the same standards as we judge ourselves.

Nothing annoys me more than this quasi-liberal fear of expressing opinions about any group these very pseudo-liberals have labeled (offensively, too!) "disadvantaged." Of course, their self-esteem issues require that every group other than their own be considered disadvantaged. How much that view is shared by the "disadvantaged" and the "underprivileged" themselves is unimportant to such quasi-liberals. All they are interested in is to police everybody who dares to pronounce that the practice of female genital mutilation is barbaric, that a niqab is not liberating to women, and that if we are to respect the Sri Lankans' right to treat their women as less than human, we should insist that when Sri Lankans - or anybody else - come to our feminist countries, they should respect our view of gender roles just as much.

Marriage Related Nightmare

There are authors whose work I keep track of in order to download their new releases on my Kindle as soon as they come out. John Lescroart is one of such writers. He has this great series of courtroom dramas set in San Francisco that I love. Tonight at 2 a.m., his new book Damage will be released. Of course, I'm planning to stay up for this book that I have been eagerly awaiting for almost a year.

To make the wait easier, I decided to have a nap. And this is where I had this horrible nightmare that left me shaking. This is one of my recurring nightmares where I dream that I suddenly discover myself married and have no idea how it happened to me or how to extricate myself from this unwanted entanglement. This time, I dreamt that I was married to this really nasty, fat, sweaty and mean student. I'm trying to hide from him because I don't even have a clue how I ended up married to him. And the Dean is calling me to ask what possessed me to marry a student. In the meantime, I'm in a state of total panic trying to come with a plan how to get out of this whole mess. A horrible, horrible dream! (Please, don't offer any psychoanalytic interpretations of this dream. I know exactly why I keep having this nightmare, so no further analysis is needed.)

Then I woke up and saw that a colleague has written to me to inform me that he has inherited my recalcitrant grad student who made my life hell last semester. Now this kind and nice colleague will have to take on the burden of dealing with this horrible student in his classroom. And that nightmare, my friends, is worse than anything I could have dreamt of.

Just wanted to share.

Preparing for new intellectual endeavors. . .

. . . requires eating a lot of sushi.

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A New Year Brings a Fresh Bout of Stupidity from Douthat

Forget about the fact that I consider Ross Douthat's ideology disgusting and his writing sloppy and incoherent. What I find the most annoying is how easily he distorts reality and fills his silly articles with lies. His most recent piece of conservative inanity begins with an outright lie, which The New York Times apparently finds it acceptable to publish:

The American entertainment industry has never been comfortable with the act of abortion. Film or television characters might consider the procedure, but even on the most libertine programs (a “Mad Men,” a “Sex and the City”), they’re more likely to have a change of heart than actually go through with it.

I don't know what's so "libertine" about the profoundly patriarchal Sex and the City, but its leading characters did have abortions. An entire episode was dedicated to Carrie remembering an abortion she had a while ago and reaching a conclusion that it was absolutely the right decision for her. Samantha and Miranda had several abortions and never felt sorry about it.

Whenever an article starts with such a blatant lie, I find it very difficult to take anything else its author proposes seriously. If he disrespects his readers to this extent, who's to say where his lies and distortions will end? Shouldn't a journalist know how to verify his information? Especially the information that's as easy to unearth as anything that has to do with Sex and the City? (Please don't tell me that Douthat made an honest mistake here. This information can be verified in a matter of two minutes at most, which he chose not to do.)

Douthat, who has turned his NYTimes column into a platform for spouting his anti-women beliefs*, suggests that instead of aborting women should give birth and offer the babies up for adoption. As any vile male chauvinist, he doesn't have a foggiest idea of what pregnancy and childbirth entail. This sad buffon, who obviously has never seen an actual woman in his close vicinity, never stop to consider that there might be some effort, work, pain, suffering, loss of productivity, health risk, danger of dying involved in carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth.

Douthat is one of the reasons I would never subscribe to The New York Times. I can't respect a newspaper that offers a weekly column to somebody so shallow and dishonest. I understand that an intelligent, well-informed conservative journalist is hard to come by, but surely that's no excuse for torturing readers with the stupid concoctions of an unscrupulous Douthat.

*In case you missed it, you can trace my anti-Douthat campaign here.

Funny Excerpts from Job Application

Here are some really hilarious excerpts from ACTUAL job applications that I found at proNexia's blog:

“I am a happy-go-lucky student, graduating this December from University ___ “

“I am fully bi-lingual English and Spanish and conversational french...”

“More than a professional, i am a girly girl at heart”.

“Here i joint my resume,and hope some of your news soon!”

Real people sent these to actual job recruiters. Scary, huh?

 Find more of these here.

Are High School Students Overworked?

On the one hand we have parents and journalists clamoring that poor high school students are, indeed, overworked. On the other hand, as a college professor I am confronted with scores of high school graduates who think that reading three pages in a week is a lot of work and that generating one original idea per month is extremely exhausting. I would have thought that this wasn't too much to expect from people who reputedly acquire a habit of working themselves to death in high school, but that is obviously not the case.

In order to solve this mystery, I asked my freshemen last semester whether they felt overburdened with work in high school. An absolute majority answered that they were. When I asked them what kind of activities that they did in high school that made them so tired, I got a single answer: projects. After they explained to me what "a project" meant in a high school environment, many of the problems I have been having with first-year college students have found their explanation. I don't know the name of the lazy teacher who first came up with the inane idea of a "project." Possibly it was the same enemy of intelligence who invented the horrible multiple-choice test.

To put it simply, a "project" involves a student (or a group of students) going on-line (sometimes, to some other source, but more often than not, on-line), gathering information on a subject, arranging it in some cutesy way (e.g. a PowerPoint presentation with lots of special effects), and delivering it, parrot-like, to the class. Nothing is ever attributed to sources in a "project," at least not in the format of an actual bibliography. After my first semester of teaching at my current university, I was forced to cancel the oral presentations in my Hispanic Civilization course because instead of an analysis of an issue, I was getting such "projects", the intellectual value of which was nil. One of the students went as far as transforming one of my lectures into a PP presentation, evidently hoping to get a high grade for inventiveness. Just imagine my horror when listening for twenty minutes to my own words arranged in cute fonts and accompanied by cartoons, pretty illustrations, and a YouTube video. The student was shocked to discover that at a university this effort got him a failing grade.  

This situation, of course, left me completely horrified. Until I had the conversation about "projects" with the sudents, though, I had no idea where they acquired the habit of facile plagiarism, why they demonstrated a scary absence of original thinking, and how they got the conviction that stealing somebody's words and arranging them differently constitutes original work.

The worst thing isn't that students are overworked in high school. It is that they expend all this effort on activities that are completely useless. Copy-pasting information from some website, whose respectability nobody ever teaches them to determine, and spending hours arranging this meaningless set of facts in a pretty way has nothing to do with learning. It's disturbing how much time is wasted on "projects" and multiple choice guesswork in high school. This is time that should have been employed in teaching the students the names of continents, expanding their very limited vocabulary, and impressing upon them the idiocy of using the Internet as a source of information that's 100% reliable.

New Year's Resolutions

Have you noticed how most New Year's resolutions are very punishing in nature? "I will lose weight, I will work more, I will be more productive, I will go to the gym at least once a week, I will quit smoking, I will eat healthy foods, I will stop procrastinating," and so on, and so forth. Obviously, none of these things are enjoyable for the author of the resolutions because if they were, s/he would be doing them already. I don't have to resolve to read books, for example, because I already do. Those who love eating healthy foods or working out, don't need to make a special resolution to do so. Of course, none of these resolutions survive the first week of January because there is enough struggle, pain and suffering in our lives already. Who needs more self-inflicted unpleasantness?

So why do people see the start of a new year as an inducement to make yet another doomed attempt to live up to some unrealistic version of themselves? I have been scrolling down my blogroll, reading the first lines of everybody's "My New Year's Resolutions" posts, and, to be honest, it sounded like a chorus of masochists coming up with extremely sophisticated methods of self-torture. These lists of self-improvement plans are also very unimaginative. They hint at the existence of some profoundly boring "good" individual who diets, works, exercises, volunteers, and eradicates every vestige of enjoyment from his or her life in an obsessive manner. It feels like a person sits down to make the list with one question in mind: "What should I do to make my life as intolerable as possible?" Whatever comes to mind, goes on the list.

The arrival of a new year reminds us of the passage of time as much as our birthdays do. It would make more sense to react to the realization that yet another year in our lives is over with a resolution to have more fun, enjoy existence more, try to get more pleasure out of living. How about a resolution to watch more reality TV shows, sleep more, go out drinking with your friends every week, spend money on completely useless stuff, and procrastinate for days just because this is what makes you happy? And if you do that already, what more proof do you need that this is something you enjoy and should resolve to do even more often?

V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River: A Review

I want to begin this new year of blogging with a review of one of the most famous books by V.S. Naipaul, a controversial writer and a Nobel Prize winner. Before I begin, I want to warn you that if you are here with the goal of ripping off this review to pass it as an essay at school, you are making a huge mistake. Not only because plagiarism is always stupid and wrong but also because my reading of this novel is very different from what your teacher wants to hear. Feel free to see if I'm right at your own peril.

V.S. Naipaul differs from many other postcolonial writers in that his attitude towards independence is a lot more complex, painful, and honest than the usual starry-eyed "Yippee! We are finally free from the vile, horrible empire" we keep getting from the writers of the postcolonial reality. I am a postcolonial subject, too. Believe me, there is nothing I like more than denouncing the ills of imperial domination. This is why I have to admire Naipaul's courage in demonstrating the fallacies of an unconditional acceptance of independence.

A Bend in the River describes post-independence struggles of an unnamed African country whose experiences are in many ways similar to those of other newly independent nations irrespective of their geographical location. The process of creating a new, post-colonial identity is central to such nations. Naipaul realizes that the only way of analyzing the workings of identity formation is from a distance. This is why the first-person narrator of this story, Salim, is a perennial outsider in all communities he inhabits. As an onlooker, Salim is in the position to notice and analyze identity-related issues better than others. This capacity, however, results in his marginalization:

A Bend in the River is a story of Salim's efforts to accept unquestioningly the nationalistic discourse of the country where he comes to reside and his failure to do so. As hard as this character tries, he never manages to escape the realization that independence is a lot more problematic than anybody around him wishes to accept. In the novel, we see a gradual disintegration of a newly independent country that leads to an ever-growing violence.

So from an early age I developed the habit of looking, detaching myself from a familiar scene and trying to consider it as from a distance. It was from this habit of looking that the idea came to me that as a community we had fallen behind. And that was the beginning of my insecurity. I used to think of this feeling of insecurity as a weakness, a failing of my own temperament, and I would have been ashamed if anyone had found out about it. I kept my ideas about the future to myself.

Naipaul's writings have been very controversial because he verbalizes those feelings and experiences of post-colonial that we don't want to acknowledge even to ourselves. Salim's friend who is even more removed from his country of origin by virtue of his European education expresses some of these concerns whose mere existence is unacceptable to many:

I hadn’t understood to what extent our civilization had also been our prison. I hadn’t understood either to what extent we had been made by the place where we had grown up, made by Africa and the simple life of the coast, and how incapable we had become of understanding the outside world. We have no means of understanding a fraction of the thought and science and philosophy and law that have gone to make that outside world. We simply accept it. We have grown up paying tribute to it, and that is all that most of us can do. We feel of the great world that it is simply there, something for the lucky ones among us to explore, and then only at the edges. It never occurs to us that we might make some contribution to it ourselves. And that is why we miss everything. When we land at a place like London Airport we are concerned only not to appear foolish. It is more beautiful and more complex than anything we could have dreamed of, but we are concerned only to let people see that we can manage and are not overawed. We might even pretend that we had expected better. That is the nature of our stupidity and incompetence. And that was how I spent my time at the university in England, not being overawed, always being slightly disappointed, understanding nothing, accepting everything, getting nothing.

"Our stupidity and incompetence?" How dare he? Haven't we been schooled to proclaim ourselves as owners of alternative and much better forms of knowledge, inhabitants of a different kind of civilization? Haven't we been told ad nauseam that we have our own Prousts and Hegels? And if nobody knows or appreciates this special contribution of ours, that doesn't mean anything is wrong with the contribution. It just means the world is unjust and its system of values is all wrong. This is what we defend with everything we have while falling over ourselves in our rush to possess as many attributes of the hated colonial masters. Contempt and desire of that which is apparently so disdained are among the unavoidable attributes of the postcolonial experience.

Naipaul's analysis of every facet of how national identities are created and imposed is nothing short of brilliant. To give just one example, every national identity requires legitimizing heroic figures that embody the best characteristics of the nation. These figures are invented, distorted, mythologized and contested by groups within the country that struggle for the right to propose their own version of national identity. Naipaul demonstrates with absolute brilliance how such symbols of national identity end up robbing the national subject of individuality:

I studied the large framed photographs of Gandhi and Nehru and wondered how, out of squalor like this, those men had managed to get themselves considered as men. It was strange, in that building in the heart of London, seeing those great men in this new way, from the inside, as it were. Up till then, from the outside, without knowing more of them than I had read in newspapers and magazines, I had admired them. They belonged to me; they ennobled me and gave me some place in the world. Now I felt the opposite. In that room the photographs of those great men made me feel that I was at the bottom of a well. I felt that in that building complete manhood was permitted only to those men and denied to everybody else. Everyone had surrendered his manhood, or a part of it, to those leaders. Everyone willingly made himself smaller the better to exalt those leaders. . .  We have nothing. We solace ourselves with that idea of the great men of our tribe, the Gandhi and the Nehru, and we castrate ourselves.

As much as one might admire Gandhi, it does get annoying to encounter yet another set of pious platitudes every time his (or any other independence leader's) name is mentioned. Any national identity is based on a set of myths that fall apart under even a very superficial kind of scrutiny. This is why national identities are so bound with emotions: we have to be blinded by our deeply emotional response to our particular piece of painted fabric, venerated independence leaders, mythology of first oppression then liberation in order to buy these poorly constructed myths.

Naipaul has made himself hated by many when he started discussing the problematic nature of each newly-achieved independence, each nationalistic mythology. His honesty leaves me speechless, while his beautiful writing style makes me feel ashamed of everything I have ever written in English. We often believe that a great writer is somebody who makes us nod our heads and think, "Oh, this is so true." That isn't greatness, though. A true genius tells us things we never thought of before, makes us angry by an assault on widely-accepted trivialities. This is precisely the kind of writer Naipaul is. A Bend in the River is, in my opinion, his angriest and consequently his best novel.