I Today’s featured post, on the caste system in India, is by Ridwan. I recommend it and its fascinating videos. I have also seen, out of professional “deformation” as we say, the film of Love in the Time of Cholera. I do not recommend it. It is weak and I feel somewhat polluted by it. … More Leni Reifenstahl
As the assiduous reader will know, a great deal of my intellectual, emotional and creative energy is spent on two activities: irrigating a desert and understanding what follows here. Notes 1. Abused people are under the illusion that if they learn to obey more perfectly, accept abnegation more completely, the pain will stop. 1.1. If … More Et encore…
Now my problem class is complaining about its grades and I cannot rest. Their e-mails are like those the Angry Professor sometimes reproduces. The people who might have grounds to wonder exactly why they have a C+ and not a B- are silent. Those on whose behalf I moved heaven and earth to find a … More Almost Finished
Hattie of Hattie’s Web said in a comment here: “There is so much pain and craziness already in your students’ lives that they can’t endure the pain and craziness of learning a foreign language.” This is, in fact, the problem. I have been trying to figure out what problem I should address – laziness? illiteracy? … More Hattie Cracks the Mystery
I It seems that now we must teach many more things at once in each course. This semester I taught three courses, to wit: A senior/graduate course in Comparative Literature, A senior course in English, and A sophomore course in Spanish. About the Spanish course I have already railed at great length. We must now … More Still More Teaching
PZ: These students refuse to learn. WM: They do not share your views on the value of learning. PZ: But they are in school, so they are on the turf of learning. They should play by house rules. WM: Not necessarily. PZ: So the house rules no longer emphasize the value of learning? WM: … … More A Corporative Whiteman
A question submitted to the most recent Republican presidential debate: Brian Denzer, Lower Ninth Ward. The U.S. would declare war if Rhode Island were bombed, yet few Americans know that the loss of an equivalent area of Louisiana wetlands has been answered with an appalling lack of leadership. At the leading edge of a range … More Brian Denzer
Watch this video, which I learned of from Liprap, and then act to help save public housing in New Orleans. The architecture in some of these projects is gorgeous, and the sturdy buildings have survived many storms. Many of those who have not been able to return to New Orleans were public housing residents and … More International Human Rights Day
I Now we have discovered that the people who normally teach the multisection course I and one other colleague suffered through this semester have secretly rewritten the textbook, to make things more tolerable. They do not teach from it but from their rewritings. These are secret so that we can preserve the illusion of having … More On Impracticality
1. We went to a mandatory meeting to watch a video in preparation for the flu pandemic the University foresees as a distinct possibility. We learned that in a pandemic, supplies and services will be hard to come by. We should always keep two weeks’ worth of food and clean water in our houses. The … More In Ideology
coldhearted scientist وداد 