And the Award for the Silliest Article of the Week Goes to. . .

. . . "A Point of View: In defence of the nanny state" by Alain de Botton. The point of this strange collection of ramblings that the author tries to sell as "a point of view" is to suggest that you only become a mature human being when you welcome the attempts of others (in this case, the benevolent government) to infantilize you:

It is perhaps in the end a sign of immaturity to object too strenuously to sometimes being treated like a child. Why does the idea of a nanny state always have to be so terrifying? The libertarian obsession with freedom ignores how much of our original childhood need for constraint endures within us, and therefore how much we stand to learn from certain paternalistic strategies. It is not much fun, nor ultimately even very freeing, to be left alone to do entirely as one pleases.

The central idea here is nothing new. Playing the role of an eternal child is pleasant and fun. Who the hell needs to shoulder the burdens of adulthood, make one's own choices, and bear the consequences? Let's abdicate our responsibilities to somebody else.

The article offers two very strange arguments as to why the government (which is presented here as an all-powerful benevolent entity, which is truly God-like in its drive to improve the fallible and weak human beings) should "dare to exhort us to act well." The first argument is that religions have traditionally imposed a long set of rules and regulations on people. They even have rules about sex. To make this extremely complex idea even clearer to us, the childlike, unintelligent readers who need to be patronized at all times, the article here offers a photo of a kissing couple with the caption: "Religions have rules about sex."

The next argument as to why freedom from governmental intrusion is a silly thing to which one could aspire is the existence of advertisement. TV commercials and billboards exhort us to do bad things (here the author is kind enough to provide two ready examples of such bad things: eating crisps and buying cars), then there should be a competing source of propaganda (the government) to tell us to be nice and

forgive others, don't be mean about people you envy, dare to apologise, be slow to anger.

The author of the article never elucidates which government on this planet can convincingly promote such a message. Apparently, he believes that our childish brains are not ready yet for the information of such degree of complexity.

I think that everybody who has read this blog for any amount of time knows that I'm not a libertarian. Still, you don't have to be one to realize that the argument offered in Botton's article cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny. Governments teaching people not to be mean and angry in order to counteract the deleterious influence of potato chips commercials is an idea that only a journalist who thoroughly despises his readers could have devised. If Botton's article is an example of the kind of paternalistic attitude he promotes, then I'll have to pass on it. Something tells me that most other people will also fail to welcome either Botton or the government assuming the role of morality police in their lives.

Green Lamp

In all the years I spent traveling around, I always dreamt that one day I would finally find a place where I'd be able to stay permanently. And then I would buy myself a green banker's lamp. For some reason, this lamp has always been a symbol of permanence, of a happy home life for me. Maybe it happened because you normally see such lamps in libraries, so I came to associate them with places where you want to stay.

A lamp like this is really inexpensive. It costs less than $30 at Walmart. You can't, however, buy this kind of a lamp if you move across state and country borders at least once a year. For a very long time, I looked at every object in terms of how easy it would be to pack, and the green banker's lamp never made the cut.

Now I finally have my green lamp. In this picture you can see how comfortable it looks on my night table.

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A Day in the Life of a Subversive Hispanist

We, Hispanists, are a scary, subversive bunch. We might look quite innocuous with our books, class plans, and dictionaries, but do not let that peaceful exterior fool you: we are a threat to society. The only way to combat our pernicious influence on the minds of young, impressionable students is to ban us from campuses altogether.

This is how this particular Hispanist spent her day: Before classes began at 9:30 am, I worked on creating an oral exam for my students in the Intermediate Spanish course. I want to include a short Argentinean cartoon on Mafalda, which is funny but also useful in that it contains precisely the kind of vocabulary and grammar structures that we have been covering in class. Then, I taught a class on Lazarillo de Tormes, which is a text that students never fail to enjoy. It was a great class, we laughed, we analyzed our favorite passages, students asked questions. Even though some of the students find it hard to express themselves as well as they would like (especially about a difficult XVIth century text like this one), they still try because the texts we read seem to excite them. At the end of the class, I promised that next time we would watch a short documentary on Cervantes, which the students are very eager to do.

After that I had my office hours during which I talked to a disabled student and discussed the options we have available to make his progress in the course as comfortable as possible. Then, we wrote a composition in my Intermediate language course. I think I finally managed to find a very successful topic for a composition at this level because for the first time in my experience of teaching the course students didn't try to finish as early as they could and rush out. 

After I taught my classes, I went over Stephen Gilman's book on Galdos and discovered that, contrary to what I'd expected, my reading of this writer is not that different from Gilman's. Then I went to the library and looked up a few more critical sources for my research project. After I got home and had dinner, I stayed in bed reading Eduardo Mendicutti's brilliant and hilarious novel Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera that a colleague (yet another subversive Hispanist) suggested to me. The book contains a great number of delicious colloquial expressions in Spanish, many of which I didn't know. So I made a list of them and devised a plan as to how I will introduce some of these expressions to my students in a fun and productive way.

This was the end of my subversive Hispanist activities for the day. Tomorrow, however, I have a completely new agenda of scary activist stuff that needs to be done (a departmental meeting, grading of student homework, preparing classes for next week, finishing my article on a XIXth century Spanish novel, etc.) Tremble with fear, people, for here I come!

The reason why I wanted to confess to my subversive Hispanist activities in a public forum is that the cat is finally out of the bag on our pernicious presence on American campuses. The enlightened and intelligent state of Arizona was the first one in the country to follow the example of the Soviet Union in repressing the field of Hispanic Studies. This is what Professor Cintli Rodriguez of Arizona who keeps getting arrested for protesting this law has to say:

Four students and myself were just sentenced to 10 hours of community service for a crime we did not commit. More importantly, our act of civil disobedience was in response to an illegal, immoral and unconstitutional law: hb 2281 – a piece of legislation that makes the teaching of Ethnic Studies in Arizona illegal. . .  As far as many of us are concerned, the battle over hb 2281 has just begun; the teaching of ethnic studies became illegal on Dec 31 and MAS was ruled out of compliance on Jan 3. We are not only convinced of its illegality, but we are certain of it because of the unambiguous actions of the state legislature. The same day the president came to Tucson, a new Republican-introduced bill (SRC 1010) calls for Arizona to be exempt from international law. As written, it will go to the voters in 2012. The thing is, this issue has already been litigated in U.S. courts. But since when has that stopped our 19th century state legislature? It is also not out of the realm of possibility that a case(s) will be taken to the Organization of American States or the United Nations. What’s at stake here is not simply the right of 11 teachers to teach, but rather, the right of all peoples (students) to education, history and culture. In Arizona, everything has been flipped upside down. Things Greek-Roman are deemed to be American and part of Western Civilization, whereas things Indigenous (MAS-TUSD Indigenous-maiz-based curriculum) are deemed to be un-American and alien. That’s why many of us were arrested. In one sense, it’s a 42-year struggle; the same battle – one over legitimacy – that’s been waged since the creation of Ethnic Studies. At another level, it’s a 518-year clash of civilizations, even though it needn’t be (the civilizations can absolutely co-exist). 

 Professor Cintli Rodriguez is, of course, right. Civilizations can, indeed, coexist. They actually become stronger, more vibrant, they flourish a lot better as a result of coexistence, contact, mutual penetration. I am absolutely convinced that my students today have gained a lot from our classes, our discussions, and our readings. How can it possibly be a good idea to place a ban on what I do? And please don't tell me that there has been a bad, racist, unintelligent Hispanist here and there so the whole discipline is suspect. There are quack doctors who damage their patients' health irreparably. Are we going to ban the entire practice of medicine as a result? 

First Article vs the Most Recent One

A while ago, I shared the story of my very first research article that I wrote - oh my God, this is really scary - exactly 10 years ago. This week, I will be finishing my tenth research piece (not counting the two dissertations, of course) that I have written in these ten years. (Is ten articles in ten years considered good in the Humanities? Somehow, the number sounds very puny. I know I will go into a fit of bemoaning my lack of productivity after I finish this post. And then everybody who knows me will have to spend hours telling me, "Oh no, of course, you are not stupid.").

The article I'm about to finish is on the same writer that I discussed in the very first piece of research I published. On the positive side, I know a lot more in terms of the historical context of the novel I'm discussing. I have a good understanding of my critical apparatus. It also helps that I have read most of what this writer and the most famous of his contemporaries ever published. I am also writing this article in English, which is something I wouldn't have been able to do successfully all those years ago (the first article was, of course, in Spanish.)

On the negative side, though, I am beset by a multitude of fears and doubts. What if a critic whose conclusions I dispute ends up reviewing the article for publication? What if the article first gets into the hands of that scary Hispanist who hates me from the bottom of her heart? What if my choice of theory upsets somebody? What if one of the reviewers hates the word "consumerism" that is so central to my analysis? What if quoting Zizek turns out to be one huge mistake that tanks my article?

Given that you can only submit your work to one journal at a time and the review process takes between 6 months and one year, these questions become daunting. Fear, however, is not a good aid for creativity. Often it gets so paralyzing that it's difficult to type a single word.

Oh youth, oh innocence! How much I miss you! It was so wonderful just to write without even knowing that any of these things can happen to you.

Teacher Appreciation Series, Post 2

Statistics shows that people read the greatest part of everything they will read in their lifetime before the age of 30. Also, the main tenets of everybody's personal worldview are formed before that age. After thirty, most of us keep recycling the knowledge, the information and the opinions we received before our thirtieth birthday. Teachers, however, keep learning as long as they continue walking into a classroom. No matter how many times they might teach the same course, there will always be new, unexpected questions that students might ask. As a result, teachers never stop learning.

Teacher Appreciation Series, Post 1

There is this disturbing tendency nowadays to dump on teachers, demonize intelligence and erudition, and worship stupidity and ignorance. I am proposing to battle this dangerous trend with a series of statements on what it means to be a teacher, and why the role of teachers' in society is important. Feel free to add your observations on why the teaching profession is great, necessary, and crucial for any society's success.

A teacher is a person who can explain the same concept and answer the same question hundred times in a row and never become impatient or lose enthusiasm for the subject that is being discussed.

Feeling Sorry for Single People

I know this woman, let's call her Helen, who has been single her entire life. She is now in her fifties and she says she is perfectlly content with her singlehood. Helen has a great career, many friends, she has lived in many different countries, and has tons of great hobbies. Still, many people insist on pitying Helen. I have actually witnessed "let's-get-together-and-feel-sorry-for-Helen" reunions where people seem to get together for the sole purpose of sharing with each other how bad they feel for poor, miserable Helen who is "all alone with nobody to take care of her." Even though Helen has been taking care of herself extremely well her entire life, people still enjoy discussing their fantasies of her misery.

Now, Helen herself seems perfectly happy. Probably for that very reason she doesn't organize pity parties to express how sorry she is for her partnered friends. The funny thing is that people who dedicate all this time to feeling sorry for Helen are in pretty crappy relationships. What would they do, I often wonder, if people like Helen didn't exist? How would they deal with the realization that their relationships suck if they couldn't take refuge from the sadness of their personal lives in the fantasies of miserable singlehood? "Well, at least I'm better off than poor Helen who's all alone," they tell themselves every time they feel their prized relationship is not that great.

Nothing, in my view, is a better measure of how people feel about their own romantic relationships than whether they experience hostility towards single people.

Winter Hat

Since I'm sharing pictures anyway, I wanted to post this picture of my new winter hat. I never wear hats in winter, no matter how cold it is. Even when I lived in Montreal, I never had a hat. I have so much hair (on my head) that no hat is usually necessary. But this one looks so Russian that I couldn't resist it. I love confusing people with my complex identity.

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Back to Work

People have hinted that they aren't interested in the photos of my boring suburban existence, but I'm still going to share this picture of the frozen tree branches glistening in the sun.

The university opened today but I have a feeling that very few students will show up today. as much as I don't want anybody to miss my introduction to Cervantes, I can't postpone it. We are really behind as it is.

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More on Arizona's Unraveling

Five minutes after I finished the previous post on Arizona's rapid descent into insanity, I learned that there is more evidence of this state's unraveling:

Members of the state Legislature, including Arizona's de facto governor, Senate President Russell Pearce, have introduced a bill that essentially would have Arizona secede from the union without having to do so officially. It's called SB1433, (See it here.) It creates a 12-member committee within the legislature that could "vote by simple majority to nullify in its entirety a specific federal law or regulation that is outside the scope of the powers delegated by the people to the federal government…" Committee members themselves would decide this, then pass along their recommendation to the full Legislature. If, in turn, a majority of state lawmakers go along with the committee then, according to the bill, "this state and its citizens shall not recognize or be obligated to live under the statute, mandate or executive order."

Fringe secessionists exist in many states but in Arizona they are powerful enough to have the Senate President on their side. 

On the one hand, in view of recent news coming out of Arizona, I'm sure there will be many people who will not be all that sorry to see this embarrassment of a state go away for good. On the other hand, what about the decent people of Arizona who are obviously a minority but who don't deserve being abandoned to the mercy of the crazed majority?

I was going to read my blogroll some more, but now I'm afraid to get even more sad news out of Arizona tonight. At this stage, there is literally nothing I'd say Arizona is incapable of doing.

Arizona: Going Deeper Into Psychosis

Arizona is not in a good way. Jared Loughner shoots up a crowd, an elementary school paints over a mural that depicts children considered a shade too brown for the liking of Arizona's racists, laws persecuting people who might be suspected of being immigrants are introduced making the entire world think that the American Constitution is now officially dead, barbaric anti-choice laws are being passed: the state of Arizona is unraveling before our very eyes. It's scary to observe such an instance of mass psychosis happening in front of one's own eyes. When I discovered that one of my blog's craziest stalkers was from Phoenix, Arizona, I wasn't surprised at all. Arizona is really not in a good way.

The most recent instance of Arizona's racism-fueled insanity is a bill that would make my field of knowledge banned in that state:

A new law banning ethnic studies programmes has gone into effect in the southwestern US state of Arizona. The state's Latino community claim the law targets them and say similar programmes in African American, Asian and Native American studies are not affected.

Arizonian racists who have been driven completely nuts by living in this barren, scary place (I am yet to meet a person born in Arizona who doesn't refer to their native state as "a hell-hole"), are now suggesting that the field of Hispanic Studies (to which they have obviously not had any actual exposure due to their irrepressible ignorance) is dangerous:

The state claims that the Latino program is more about creating future activists and less about education.

Activists, of course, are scary. Arizona's political leaders realize that the only people who will buy into their racist insanity are those who have been rendered completely passive by stupidity and ignorance.

I don't think there is any hope for Arizona at this point. They will start burning witches soon. But, hell, I'm one of those scary Hispanists whose goal in life is to turn people into political activists, so who cares what I think?

P.S. If you have any respect for human rights, please join those of us who hate Arizona's racist policies and boycott this state. Make you outrage known to Arizona's politicians, boycott Arizona's goods and services, don't visit this horrible state. Let the people of Arizona know that no decent person can respect their leaders' racist policies.

Do the Jews Have a Right to Free Speech?

1) Last year,  a group of students at UC Irvine shouted down a speech by an Israeli ambassador. Today, the students are facing charges:

More than 50 protesters — some with masking tape plastered over their mouths — rallied in front of the Orange County district attorney's office Tuesday, objecting to subpoenas and a grand jury investigation that could lead to criminal charges against 11 students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador last year.The district attorney's office declined to comment. The office has one year after the event to file charges. . . "These students aren't criminals, they shouldn't have their lives ruined by criminal charges at this point," said Carol Sobel, an attorney who has worked with the 11 students who were disciplined and represents the other six students who were subpoenaed. "And we should all move forward." The Feb. 8, 2010, incident sparked a debate about free speech at the campus after a group of students disrupted a speech by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Oren was shouted down repeatedly and supporters cheered as students were escorted away by police.

2) On September 9, 2002, a group of students at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada prevented the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from giving a scheduled speech at the university. Two months later, a Jewish student club Hillel was banned from campus for distributing flyers aimed at recruiting for the Israeli Defense Force.

3) The University of Aix-en-Provence cancelled a conference of Mediterranean writers in the summer of 2010 after a group of protesters decried the participation of an Israeli writer at the conference. 

4) In 2009, protesters boycott Toronto Film Festival for screening a film by an Israeli film-maker:

The protest of Israel began Aug. 27 when Canadian filmmaker John Greyson released a public letter stating he would withdraw his film from the 10-day festival, which opens Thursday, to protest Israel’s “brutal” military assault on Gaza earlier this year. On Thursday Sept. 3, writer Naomi Klein and others joined Mr. Greyson’s protest and issued ” The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation.”

5) Students at Arizona State University in the United States of America (a country that is constantly waging wars in different parts of the globe)  demonstrate their conviction that only American soldiers are allowed to kill, maim, and torture:

Arizona State University students protested the visit of Nadav Weinberg, an Israeli soldier who came to speak to students about his experiences serving in Israel's army.  The protesters voiced their opposition to the Israeli army through a silent protest. Shortly after Weinberg began speaking protestors took off their jackets to unveil their red shirts that had the names, ages and dates of innocent civilians whose lives were taken by Israeli troops. Protestors covered their mouths with red tape to express solidarity with the victims. One sign held up by a protestor in the back of the room read: "Giving Voice to Civilians Silenced by IDF Policy."

 6) An Israeli chess player gets kicked out of a chess tournament in Los Angeles just for being from Israel:

The Israeli chess player Anatoly Bykhovsky has been deleted from lists of competitions in Los Angeles as it has arrived from "the terrorist state". . . The Israeli grand master Anatoly Bykhovsky has been surprised and shaken, when it have discharged of tournament which starts within the next few days in Los Angeles. The newspaper "Ediot Ahronot" informs that Bykhovsky has registered in tournament, but in the beginning of week has received enough gruff reply from its organizer - heads of city club Mika Bighamiana. The letter said that Anatoly do not suppose to participation as "we do not allow to participate to players from the terrorist states in our tournament".

What all these people have in common is their firm belief that Israeli Jews should not be entitled to same rights (namely, the right to free speech) as everybody else. It is especially curious that protesters who do all they can to shut up Jews then claim freedom of speech in their defense.


P.S. International Holocaust Remembrance Day, created in 2005 by a UN General Assembly resolution, coincides with the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.  

The Marvels of Today's Technology. . .

. . . allow me to find out via Twitter that Slavoj Zizek has published a new article on the events in Egypt and Tunisia, go read the article, write a blog post about it, quote the article in the post, send the post to the blog, thank the person who alerted me to the article, notify several people that the post has appeared, moderate the comments to the post: ALL WITHOUT EVER GETTING OUT OF BED.

For somebody who is old enough to remember the times when in order to make a phone call you had to walk to the place in the house where the phone was located, when in order to read an article you had to schlep to a library, when the only people who could share their thoughts about an article or a piece of news freely with the world were the very rich, the very famous or the very powerful - for somebody who remembers all that, today's technological advances are a marvel indeed.

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Zizek on Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia

Slavoj Zizek's analysis of the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia is brilliant, as usual: "The rise of radical Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries." If you aim to destroy progressive leftist movements in developing countries, you can guarantee that in case of your success the void will be filled by fanatical religious groups.

There is hope that what's happening right now can fortify progressive movements in the countries where civil unrest is getting stronger daily: "And it is crucial to read the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt (and Yemen and … maybe, hopefully, even Saudi Arabia) against this background. If the situation is eventually stabilised so that the old regime survives but with some liberal cosmetic surgery, this will generate an insurmountable fundamentalist backlash." Zizek is absolutely right, in my view, when he points out that a fanatical religious backlash is the main danger in Egypt and Tunisia right now. And this is something that the international community needs to help avoiding.

Zizek takes to task Western liberals who fail to rally behind secular revolutions in these countries: "The hypocrisy of western liberals is breathtaking: they publicly supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion, they are all deeply concerned. Why concern, why not joy that freedom is given a chance?" I agree with Zizek in that the worst thing that can happen is the proliferation of fanatical fundamentalist regimes in the region (or anywhere else in the world). That is something to be avoided at all costs.

Read the entire article here: http://www.zcommunications.org/why-fear-the-arab-revolutionary-spirit-by-slavoj-zizek


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Can We Stop Republican Insanity?

Amongst the crushing unemployment, the growing national debt, the worn out infrastructures, the sinking reputation of the US on the world arena, our newly elected Republicans have identified the most urgent issue to resolve: public funding for abortions for victims of rape and incest. Republicans are seeking to redefine rape in a way that will deny access to abortion to the mentally disabled, children, or those who were raped while drugged, coerced, or unconscious. 

This is not all, however. This is everything that the bill H.R.3 that Speaker John Boehner refers to as "the highest legislative priority" will achieve:

• HR3 makes permanent the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for a legal medical procedure. As it stands, Hyde must be renewed each year.
• HR3 strong arms private insurance companies into removing coverage for abortions by instituting an anti-choice litmus test to discriminate against companies and programs that cover them.
• HR3 will make it harder for rape victims to seek justice, by creating a hierarchy of rape that is based on the worst elements of rape culture. HR3 is based on the idea that “good” people are only raped by strangers and “good” people are the only ones deserving of  medical care.
• HR3 disempowers survivors economically, financially, legally, and socially. Under Hr3 a person who is drugged, raped, and forcibly impregnated could be left to withstand the ordeal of a rape trial while pregnant, going into the courtroom each day and facing their attacker, without the money or the resources to stop it.
• Rapists already thrive on power. Rapists already want to control their victims, want them to get and stay pregnant as a constant reminder of the attack or out of a need for control. It is unconscionable that elected politicians are empowering rapists and using the lives of survivors to prove their anti-choice credentials.
• The opening of the bill mentions that it provides “conscience protections” against tax dollars being spent on abortion. If your conscience tells you that abortion should be free, safe, and legal, it apparently isn’t worthy of protection. Every single person who co-sponsored this bill has sided with people who want to control other people’s bodies and call it morality.

But that's not all. This bill reinforces a philosophy of rape acceptance:

It’s not just about abortion; it is passing rape apologism and rape culture into law. We’re all familiar with the attitude that rape only “really” counts if someone jumps out of the bushes with a weapon and physically tortures, beats, or maims you in addition to raping you; that’s a big part of what this clause is about. This sets a terrifying precedent that takes us back to the days when the law wouldn’t define your rape as a rape unless you’d demonstrated “utmost resistance,” meaning that you’d risked your life to get into a physical fight with someone who already wanted to rape you, and wouldn’t have a problem with hurting you really, really severely to get that done. We cannot let this stand. It’s not something on which there can be any compromise, ever, at any time.

People, this is an atrocity. We can't let such a cannibalistic piece of legislation pass and still consider ourselves a civilized country. 

What can we do to fight this?

• Join the #DearJohn Twitter campaign to draw attention to the issue right to Speaker of the House John B. The more tweets, the harder to ignore. Write to @johnboehner and add #DearJohn as the tag. (To my International Readers: If you want to stand with us, please add your voice to the Twitter campaign.) More info on this here: How to join the DearJohn campaign.

• Contact your Representatives.
  Clicking on the following image will take you to a state directory to find your representative:
  
  
  
  A personal email or call may be more effective than a chain petition. That being said, don't hesitate to sign the following ...
  
  
• MoveOn.org Petition against the bill that will "redefine rape and set women's rights back by decades." 

Thank you, Natalie, at Flaneur in the City, for organizing and publicizing this information so well!

Find further information and discover how you can take action against this atrocity here and here. 

Doing Research Isn't Easy

One would think that writing a research article for 4 hours is not that big of a deal. How can anybody get tired from that? For some reason, though, it's usually draining. I wrote 4 pages, dropped down in exhaustion, and slept for another three hours. Sorry for keeping everybody's comments in moderation in the meanwhile.

I have discovered that blogging has taught me to write my English-language articles a lot faster. When I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I could never do more that 3 pages in one day. (I did 5 once, but the I was useless for days after that.) But since I started this blog, I'm a lot more comfortable with writing in English. On Sunday, for example, I just sat down and wrote 8 full pages of my article. And then I had to force myself to stop. 

OK, I'll stop ranting about writing my article and just go write some more.

Students and Medication

Even though I cultivate a significant distance from my students and do not believe in being buddy-buddy with them, students tend to feel very comfortable in my classes. We have a lot of group activities in which I participate, so even in a big classroom we get to know each other quite well. So they share things they might not have otherwise revealed to other "adults." (Yes, they actually refer to themselves as "kids" and to me as "an adult." Which sounds especially funny when the "kid" in question is a 6 foot 5 football player. Besides, quite a few of the "kids" in my classes have actual kids of their own.) 

Once I asked students what they did to prepare for exams. I'm very naive in many respects, which I'm always ready to confess. All I know about hard drugs is what I've seen on television. I have no idea which drug is supposed to be sniffed, injected, smoked or eaten. As for prescription medication, unless I'm so sick that I'm being carted into the ER, I'm not going to take any. I don't even take Tylenol or have it at home. So my question to the students was aimed at eliciting information as to whether they prepare for exams by going over their notes alone or get together in groups to help each other. Innocent things like that.

Imagine my surprise when in response I got a list of medications that students routinely take to help them concentrate and stay awake while they are preparing. Turns out there is a tradition of taking ADD medication as part of preparing for exams. There are also "coffee pills" and other things whose names I didn't even manage to remember. Students just kept rattling them off like it was the most natural thing in the world. When I recoiled in horror, the students found that funny. Now they must think I'm some hopelessly ancient fuddy-duddy. 

Since that conversation, I stopped giving cumulative final exams because I don't want to drive my students to a drug addiction. It's sad, though, that these young people have such a cavalier attitude to drugs. It's also quite shocking that they believe - for some unfathomable reason - that their own young brains are insufficient to carry them through the finals week. When I was an undergrad, I never took less than 6 courses per semester (I was in the Honors program). I also worked while going to school. Sometimes, I wouldn't get enough sleep and felt tired. But I managed to do very well in the program without even thinking about medication. Today, however, my experiences are seen as outdated by the new generation of students. 

Job Fair: Any Suggestions?

If the university doesn't close tomorrow too, I'll have to participate in a job fair where we talk to the students about the career choices they have if they major in our respective departments. I'm also supposed to bring props to have some sort of visual evidence of what people can do with a degree in foreign languages and literature. So I have no idea what I could bring. It can't be anything bulky because how will I carry it? It can't be a map of the world because there is no place to put it up. 

Does anybody have any suggestions? Of course, I will dress "like a European", so visually I will serve as a prop. But what else?

Any advice is highly appreciated.

Bye-bye, My Syllabi!

So the classes were cancelled. Again. Since the beginning of the semester, I have only taught one class per week because of all these cancellations. I have no idea why the classes were cancelled today, since there isn't even any snow on the ground, and it's quite warm. Now I'm walking around the house, singing, "Bye-bye, my syllabi." It's very difficult to teach when you have to keep cutting things out of the syllabus.Continuity is key in my literature survey course. I am yet to rise to the level of Fray Luis de Leon, who after a five-year-long imprisonment at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition walked into the classroom and continued his lecture that had been interrupted years ago by his incarceration with the words, "As we were saying yesterday. . ."

Oh well. At least now I will be able to write at least four more pages of my article.

Mary Winkler and the Price of Patriarchy

This story happened a while ago but ever since I learned about it I couldn't stop thinking about how detrimental patriarchy is for men and women alike. And how, at the same time, it benefits both men and women in strange ways. 

In 2006, Mary Winkler shot Matthew Winkler, her husband and the father of her children, in the back with a shotgun as he lay sleeping. He could have still been saved but Mary Winkler simply turned around, took her children and left as her husband lay dying. She lied to her daughter and told her that help for Daddy was on its way and just left. It was later revealed that Mary Winkler had invested all her family savings into a Nigerian money scam. To cover for her money losses she started writing bad checks, which got her further into debt. The bank had threatened to contact her husband for clarifications. So the night before the bank was due to contact her husband, Mary Winkler shot him with a shotgun. There was never any question that she was the killer.

So how much time in jail do you think she got for this murder? A murder aimed at concealing her financial machinations, no less? A murder of a sleeping, helpless individual? A week. That's it. Just one week for the murder of her husband, a preacher, a man deeply respected in their community. At trial, Mary Winkler alleged abuse at the hands of her husband and suggested that he had wanted her to engage in "unnatural" sex. There was absolutely no proof of any abuse. Except, that is, for a pair of stripper shoes that Winkler's lawyer brought into the courtroom from God knows where. The stripper shoes that her husband allegedly asked her to wear gave the jury an excuse to let the murderer go free. Well, not completely free. There was that week in jail.

There is hardly any need to point out that if a man shot his wife and the mother of his children in the back while she lay sleeping in bed and then left her to die, he could have brought every pair of freaky shoes under the sun into the courtroom only to get laughed right into a prison cell where he'd spend the rest of his life. 

Patriarchy damages women in a multitude of ways. It strives to push them into marriage and motherhood, which many women neither need nor want. It traps women in lifestyles that do not fulfill them and that leave them angry, miserable, and depressed. It makes it so much more difficult for women to succeed professionally and financially. However, patriarchy doesn't treat men all that much better. Men's lives are always valued a lot less than women's lives. In every developed country in the world, men have shorter lifespans than women. Men are expected to wear themselves out prematurely while keeping not only their children but often also a wife. Who can shoot them in the back and get off with a week-long sentence.

Ain't patriarchy just grand, people?