What did you have for dinner? I had a piece of marinated and grilled steak, grilled asparagus, green salad, papaya, and white wine. I should have had red wine, but I did not have any, and now I want chocolate mousse, but I do not have any. I am eating a bad Camembert. Some of … More On Nutrition
In the supermarket today, the people in line ahead of me and the checker were discussing Obama. He has raised their taxes and utility bills, and raised prices on everything. He has made major policy changes that have moved us very far leftward. The participants in the discussion then gave limp wristed, parodic Black Power … More Vignettes around Blackness
ONE Do you think there’s ever an exception to this advice? Undine has a great post on service, too. The types of service I most dislike are website maintenance and the tasks surrounding the creation of extracurricular and enrichment activities for students. I dislike these activities the most when there is no support for them. … More On Service
We are asked to teach online because we need money and the University of Phoenix has a corner on that market here. I might be better at teaching online than some people just because of my blogging and web design experience, and my interests in media. However, there are serious reasons not to volunteer. Some … More We Are Asked to Teach Online
ONE: The Emeritus Professor used to say you had to be from the upper classes to be an academic. I would laugh, as we are not ourselves from the upper classes, and also because whereas the Emeritus Professor worked at an institution where one could have research expenses paid, I do not; to function I … More On Class
In the past three weeks I have accomplished too little in terms of visible production. What have I been doing in this hot village? For it is so hot that I find it difficult even to watch whole films, read whole books, or listen to whole albums. I have been reading very short texts. In … More The Open Source Fallacy
We went to Lafayette, to a benefit for the Gulf Restoration Network, and saw D. L. Menard. We went in through the front door, so as to pay the cover charge, which was the point. To get there, we burned fossil fuels; that is why we had to leave dedans la porte en arrière. You, … More Gulf Restoration with D. L. Menard
I, the narrator and performer of this weblog am presently located at a UNESCO World Heritage Centre, where I am to meet the author who is in transit from his stela so we can go back to work in the United States. We want New Orleans to be a UNESCO World Heritage Centre and are … More On UNESCO World Heritage Centres
This music video could be good to use in class. I must teach Spanish literature from 1700 to 2010 soon, a topic about which I do not know enough to create a non-stiff survey. I usually teach it with a set of representative texts. I survive it, but I am not truly current in this … More Río Ebro
Someone recently mentioned an expectation of their academic career that they had had in graduate school and that was not fulfilled: they would move up, and up again. I had not had that expectation, and certainly not on my own behalf. I did have some misconceived ideas about what academic culture was generally, that produced … More Academic Mondays: What We Imagined
coldhearted scientist وداد 