I was going to use the phrase “on putting your heart into it” but it struck me that believing in it, if perhaps less accurate in certain ways, had the advantage of minimizing the Scouts leader tone. This is another post I do not have time to write today but it is about enthusiasm, actually … More On believing in it
The Chronicle now says we should “embrace our inner North Dakotan” and I disagree with most of the old, tired platitudes they reiterate in their article. But then, I am apparently unusual in that I know what I want and what I want, I want for realistic reasons, not for merely conformist reasons or prestige, … More On choosing a job
It again seems to me that work is easier to do than the other things one does in life, and that of work activities, the easiest is research. In graduate school the easiest research activity was writing, but at the moment I find it to be reading. Reading has become easier because I know more, … More In which I experience life as I did in graduate school and early assistant professordom.
Hardly a week passes without a new scandal: a voucher school being led not only by a former state representative but a self-proclaimed prophet and apostle, a Delhi-based charter school that loves state money but not pregnant students, BESE’s corrupt “walking quorums,” the use of wacky creationist textbooks that are now a national laughingstock and … More “Carrying Water for Jindal”
After the imposition of Law 1008, “Trials often lasted five years or more before a sentence was declared.”[v] As a result, Bolivian prisons soon swelled with people detained on low-level drug charges. For example, “In one Cochabamba prison that receives prisoners from the Chapare, twenty times more prisoners entered the prison in 1994 than in … More Prison/Military Industrial Complex
I bought this dress in black, because I saw it in a shop window by chance and knew it was for me. Now I see that it also exists in red. Should I buy it? Pro: I already know it is a great dress and that I will really wear it. Red is the best … More Shall I buy this dress?
I Paul Ryan is truly disgusting and I have to say, this is why I do not like to teach lower division students — too many of them resemble him, and emulate men like him. And that, in turn, is why I do not like the fall semester. I do not have dissociative episodes about … More Des dialogues
Too tame a life, perhaps that is it. I would rather have the life of Sir Richard Burton, or someone like that. He, too, was a scholar. Notice, though, the vocabulary of debt and obligation that goes with academia. You did a Ph.D. People say the price you pay is to teach. You owe the … More “Too tame a life”
I must be an impulsive risk-taker, not quite in my right mind, and I was probably a victim of child rape although I do not remember it. I am distanced from the emotions I must surely have. Indeed, I am downright unfeeling. Why is this so? Because I do not exhibit the requsite fear of … More On race and gender policing
It is not that I must protect my time and project, with management and discipline — it is that I must allow my time and project to protect me. My mother has been saying I was an organized person since before I started school. I never knew how she had seen this so soon, how … More Slightly Spontaneous
coldhearted scientist وداد 