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Friday, October 20th, 2006
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10:05 am - North Korea "Sorry" for Nuclear Test
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The North Korean Press Ministry released the following statement today:
Oh geez guys. We're sorry. We only accidentally built a huge facility dedicated solely to the purpose of conducting an underground fission explosion. I mean, it's some kind of weird accident that a bunch of lead shielded plutonium bombs got down there with trigger mechanisms and we just happened to set them off.
Do you think you can you forgive us for the biggest "fuck you" to the international community ever displayed? We didn't really mean it. I mean, despite the shouting and the parades and the press release and the flag waving.
We're sorry. Really. Can't we all just get along?
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2590624
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 20th, 2006
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10:30 pm - Will Ferrell is not dead, but...
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| Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
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11:37 am - and the award for most pathetic whinging cow goes to...
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Annie Proulx. No surprise.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/15/film.proulx.ap/index.html
I'm sorry you lost, Annie. I'm more sorry that you felt the need to embarass yourself by ripping apart someone else in (again, not surprisingly) the Guardian. Didn't your mother ever teach you that you don't build yourself up by tearing others down?
So, a few words of advice.
#1: Get the fuck over yourself you whingy cunt.
#2: Enjoy the awards you have received, like, oh, I dunno, the fucking Pullitzer and the National Book Award.
#3: Grow up.
current mood:  cranky
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
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9:52 pm - I know I'm not supposed to...
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single out my students. I mean, it's embarassing right?
Well, what if they do something great? Not that it's a major accomplishment or anything but it struck me.
There is a young man in my freshman seminar by the name of Mr Luna. Mr Luna just wrote a short response paper for me on Plato's Apology. He commented that he was confused by the title, because there is nothing apologetic in Socrates' speech. And it is at this point that Mr Luna did the unthinkable.
He looked the word up and found that it meant a defence speech.
Not only did this young man, a freshman in college, a) admit that he didn't understand something he b) more importantly, took the initiative to correct it.
I'm not supposed to single out my students, but Bravo Mr Luna. You made me proud.
current mood:  surprised
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
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4:19 pm
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this is the look that says
"Go ahead and ask your fucking questions, Kennedy, you fat drunken liberal shitbag. I'm going to be the next Supreme Court Justice, and I'll still be sitting on the bench when your lumpy arse is dead."
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, December 5th, 2005
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11:29 am - if it can happen to Kathleen Raleigh...
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I wonder if anyone else happened to see "Dateline" the other night. They ran a programme about a small Tridentine Rite sedevacantist church. They call it a cult, and there are some indications that things have taken a turn for the bizarre: allegations of various forms of abuse and control seem reasonably well documented. Nonetheless I worry because I generally believe that a "cult" is what the big congregation calls the little congregation. But this isn't what boggled my mind about this story.
Kathleen Raleigh is 78 years old. At age 65, she left her home and family, and joined this church. No one forced her, she was not coerced in any way. Kathleen Raleigh is not senile, she is not demented, she is not insane, except by the standards of those people for whom any religious belief (especially one that contradicts their own prejudices) constitutes insanity, and they are legion. In the interviews she was lucid, intelligent and *pissed off*.
The show displayed a videotape of Raleigh's three grown children ambushing her and literally dragging her screaming from a hospital and throwing her into a van. Kathleen Raleigh calls this a kidnapping, and I am hard pressed to see how anyone could call it anything else. A grown woman, against her will, accosted in public and abducted.
Yet we are supposed to sympathise with these children, whose mother was taken from them by this "cult." The arrogance, the selfishness of these disgusting little self-righteous brats makes me want to vomit. Where the hell do these people get off? You want to confront mom and try to talk her down? Great. You want to do an expose on this self-styled One True Church? Knock yourself out. You want to use hidden cameras, listening devices, infiltration? OK, go ahead. But I'm sorry, I draw the line at physically abducting grown people because you don't agree with their religious beliefs.
Those of us who have beliefs that lie outside the religious mainstream should take note. It doesn't take much to be labeled a cult, and if someone can lob that name at you, you are a moving target. If it can happen to her...
current mood: angry
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, December 1st, 2005
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10:46 pm - grading done
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What a nightmare quarter in terms of grading. I've never given so many R (in progress) IN (incomplete) and FX (apparent withdrawal) grades in my life.
I also gave my first D+. It's the same as a D, just with a plus added for a little extra insult, as if to say "you were thiiiiiis close to passing."
Just for the record, handing me three pages on an assignment that was supposed to be eight to ten pages, and apologising at the end of your paper DOES NOT cut it.
current mood: relieved
current music: Ishida Yoko - Majestic Taste Cuisine Group Theme Song
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
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7:45 pm - Welcome to...
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Today's installment of...
Shit that fucking beaks me off!
Today's pet peeve concerns people who respond to questions on e-lists.
E-lists are a great resource. Ask a question, and often within minutes, answers come from people from all over the world who have a particular expertise that exceeds my own. I love this and I make great use of it.
However,
if someone asks a question on an e-list, there are several steps you should follow before responding:
#1 Read the question.
Very little is more annoying than asking a question about beet farming and having someone respond about how they solved a problem in their bowling alley. Make sure you understand what the question is before you attempt to answer it. Yes, this may actually require reading several sentences of text, but this is a necessary evil. If you don't understand what is being asked, get some clarification.
#2 Ensure that you really have an answer.
If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up. If your experience is insufficient to properly answer the question, shut up. If the question confuses you, shut up.
No answer is vastly superior to muddled mindless drivel. If you don't know the answer, keep your gob stopped and wait for an answer from someone who does.
#3 Limit your suggestions to the useful.
If I ask a question about variations on the Budapest Gambit, please don't suggest a Google search on "Chess" as a solution. In fact, never suggest a Google search in answer to any question, unless the inquirer is a quite obviously a complete knob. In most cases, if someone has taken the time to go to an e-list and ask a question, it's probably because they've exhausted simpler options, like, oh, I dunno, a web-search.
#4 Don't be a fuckwit.
People who ask questions generally are sincerely interested in answers. Heaping abuse on someone for asking what seems to you to be a silly question only makes you look like a complete tosser. And remember, regular rules of normal human behaviour in fact DO still apply. Also apply standard protocols: don't YELL, <snip> extraneous text, don't include the whole digest in your reply, etc.
Following these rules in replying to me personally will significantly decrease the chance that I will show up at your house and go at your head with a tin-opener.
Thank you for your time. This has been
Shit that fucking beaks me off!
current mood: pissed off
current music: L'arc en ciel - Ready, Steady, Go
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(comment on this)
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| Saturday, October 15th, 2005
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9:27 pm - playing right into their hands...
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What the hell are people thinking?
The National Socialist Party (an American Nazi Party) announces that it's going to stage a march to protest "black crime." Standard race-baiting. The Nazis are wrong about everything. Counter demonstrators maturely throw eggs at them. When the police refuse to arrest the Nazis (who haven't done anything except mill around at this point) the mostly black crowd turns on the police. The result? Attacks on police, which promptly turn to looting, arson, and vandalism. Because the Nazis are wrong.
Aren't they?
Please, someone tell me they are...
They ARE wrong, aren't they?
current mood:  nauseated
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, October 11th, 2005
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1:35 pm - more whinging
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OK, here's something that really irks me. I have a student, seemingly
bright kid, complaining that we're "belabouring the obvious" in class.
The problem is, it's fairly clear that he doesn't understand the idea
that he's classifying as obvious. I really just want to whump him and
say, "if it's so bloody obvious, how come you don't get it?"
WHUMP.
current mood: whingy
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, September 23rd, 2005
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10:34 am - night and day...
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Well, some hope has been offered to me in the form of a few really good papers, and some wonderful discussion in my classes. Perhaps the situation is not so dire as it seems. When I have students that not only understand Plato and Röpke, but also are willing to critique them intelligently, I consider that the world may not yet deserve total annihilation.
Maybe.
We'll see.
current mood: hopeful
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
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11:31 pm - but wait! there's more!
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I am attempting to mark what is very possibly the worst paper I have ever read. Among the myriad problems with this text:
#1 the paper should be 4-6 pages long. it is 2.
#2 the paper is supposed to be a response paper, and it doesn't even mention the text to which it is ostensibly responding.
#3 the text it appears to be responding to was not the one assigned
#4 the author clearly doesn't understand the text that he appears to be responding to
I can't even fail it. To attach a grade, even a failing grade, to this would be on some level to acknowledge that it bears some relationship to the class for which it was submitted, or that it is actually some form of written communication. It is not: it is linguistic diarrhea, most likely brought on by some form of mental dysentery.
current mood: nauseated
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(comment on this)
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10:10 pm - is it legal to hunt them?
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I'm not sure what's worse. The cluelessness of my colleagues, or the outright, rampant, unmitigated stupidity of my students.
In a recent assignment, one wrote railing about the text we were
reading bringing together business and religion. He couldn't understand
why the author was referring to the Ten Commandments. Of course, the
text is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
I think that it is pretty well clearly stated that the book is about
business and religion. Off you go, into the category of "Just
Doesn't Get It."
current mood: pissed off
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, September 12th, 2005
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5:34 pm - and so again...
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I use my livejournal as an opportunity to openly gripe about things that most people couldn't care less about. But that's what livejournal is for, isn't it?
Today, I received a solicitation from the head of my university's study abroad program, asking us to open our classrooms to a speaker who was recruiting for an organisation that sponsors trips to Mexico. No problem, right? That's his job.
Now, I know this guy. I went to school with him. He's a good guy, and is passionate about his work, and does a fine job. I certainly don't want to attribute to him any malice.
But...
The organisation he's pushing has a very specific left-wing political agenda, and has been actively linked with groups smuggling illegal immigrants into and within the United States. What disturbs me is not that my colleague would suggest that such an organisation receive tacit, if not explicit, endorsement by allowing its representative to speak in our classrooms, but that he didn't see any problem. Academic groupthink is so prevalent that in most academics' minds, this group isn't a political organisation at all. The logic goes something like this: because we all agree that the United States is doing environmental damage to Mexico, and because we all agree that illegal immigrants should have the same rights and privileges of citizens, actively recruiting students in our classrooms to support those causes is not a political act.
I'm not one to support the idea that we should have a politics-free classroom: I think it's impossible, and not even desirable if it were possible. But that is a question of academic freedom, and pressure from the administration to endorse a particular political agenda is a gross violation of that freedom.
current mood: pissed off
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 17th, 2005
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2:45 pm - I'm considering...
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the possibility of posting more frequently.
Oh dear. Time to unload the car.
Yeah.
Stuff like that.
All the fucking time.
current mood: bored
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 19th, 2005
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10:13 pm - Habemus Papam
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Well, more accurately, THEY have a Pope.
Despite my deep and abiding affection for the tradition, liturgy, and ceremonial of the Church of Rome, it must be acknowledged that I am precisely the kind of person that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (otherwise known as the Holy Office of Inquisition) would have loved to have burned alive.
I admire the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger by the College of Cardinals however. He is a strong anti-modernist, and has explicitly condemned the relativism and hyper-individualism of the modern age. And on that, he and I agree. But more than that, I think that when the Church begings to adapt itself to the faithful, especially in an attempt to retain or grow its numbers, it sells its soul. Or that part of its soul it hasn't already sold.
I don't agree with many of his positions. But by God you know where he stands, and he stands where the Church has stood for some 1500 years. And that's nothing to sneeze at. I'll take a rigid, authoritarian moralist over a wishy-washy relatavist any day. The Church is not a democracy, and when it starts to act like one, it will be done for. Pope Benedict XVI is no democrat. And standing up for hierarchy is something I can applaud.
I believe that Pope Benedict XVI will preserve what is worthwhile in the Church. I think he's also going to preserve a lot of rubbish. But I think of babies and bathwater.
So...though I am a heretic, I say
VIVA IL PAPA
May the Spirit work through him to the benefit of all the faithful of the universal church throughout the Aeons.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, August 25th, 2004
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8:43 am - I'M TRENDY!!!
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| Wednesday, June 30th, 2004
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4:54 pm - not quite yet...
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So, God willing, the technicians will come tomorrow and will get my cable internet service back. I'm sure they'll try to convince me that it was my fault. *grumble*
Anyway...happy almost July.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 29th, 2004
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10:08 am - back...sorta
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It seems that after nearly a week off the grid, I am more or less back online. The techs are coming back on Thursday to try to stabilise my connection, but even then I'm not holding my breath. Hopefully I will have a stable internet connection by the end of the week.
In other news, I woke up after a strange dream the other day: I had dreamt that there had been a small earthquake. Nothing serious, just a little tiny tremor. Since I live in Wisconsin (not exactly earthquake country) I laughed it off.
I have since discovered why I had this dream. Believe it or not, we had a goddamn earthquake. Who'd have guessed?
Oh well...hopefully I can get this sent through. Wish me luck.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, June 21st, 2004
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9:58 am - for a dear friend
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Sometimes, this journal isn't for me. It's for more important people.
You will find the answer if you
let it go.
Give yourself some time to falter
don't forego.
Know that you're loved no matter what
And everything will come around...
in time.
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(comment on this)
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