I can write in more detail later, but I do note that when Frederick Douglass visited the house where he had spent time as a child–my family’s house–they did in fact offer him, and he did in fact accept a glass of wine. They were at the same time involved in reenslavement at their Mississippi … More On that Heineken advertisement
While I am at the conference in Utrecht I will have an Air B and B apartment and after that I am theoretically spending 4 nights in Tournai and 4 in Antwerp. I had a more economical place to stay in Antwerp (the ‘t Stadhuys Grote Markt) but heard it was very noisy and so … More After Utrecht
The weakness of Linux is wi-fi, at least in my experience. I am still trying to get the Ubuntu 16.04 drivers to work correctly. Here is one putative solution. Axé.
I must work out my ideas for a different kind of film course than I have given in the past. Ideally the course will work at two levels. Some students will be working on grammar and vocabulary through film, and others will be doing senior-type work. How to choose the films? Are they: the ones … More Film syllabi in Spanish
According to the New Yorker, Ivanka Trump was “born with a silver spoon in her mouth” and has “patrician” looks. I read this and said what? She is neither an aristocrat nor patrician, she is merely rich! How can the New Yorker, of all publications, misuse these terms so? I thought my attitude might be … More On American aristocracies
I hope people actually respond to this. I had a huge argument today with some people in the adjunct movement, about this. They are convinced I do not understand that they are in poverty and I do not think their position is actually very well thought out. They have massive amounts of documentation of poor … More On academic freedom, again
What is a good literary or poetry magazine, in French, that publishes translations and that is not terribly hard to get into? One of my undergraduates has published translations to English in Alchemy (a translation journal for students) and Tripwire (a poetry journal, not just for students), and I know of many other places to … More A serious question, and lagniappe
Were I a surrealist painter I would paint several versions of this dream. Vallejo would write a difficult, but not surrealist poem about it. I wish I had Freud or Jung to study it. In it, I was visiting at a huge house, large enough to be a castle. My room had a huge waterbed … More A very strange nightmare
Although it is a question of time, as well. If I am going to LASA in Lima, then another event in Tampa and another in Washington, and if I am to go to California and Minnesota as well, do I have time to do this in a way that would actually benefit me? I already … More Si j’avais l’argent
I have said this before, I know, but it keeps coming true. Every time I try to “make good use of time” the way professors like it — rush, use every pause to get something else done, watch the clock, do things as quickly as possible, keep a strict schedule, and so on — I … More My usual anti-rushing, anti-timing post
coldhearted scientist وداد 