You Still Think I Get Paid Too Much?

This is an essay that I just finished grading. I blurred it to preserve the author's anonymity but you can still see my corrections in red. The student is a native speaker of Spanish, so the corrections don't have to do with poor command of grammar. 

I have 38 more essays to grade. 

Our Rally in Support of Wisconsin and Public Sector Workers Everywhere

We might be a backwards little town in the middle of nowhere. We might be located in the Bible Belt. We might belong to a very conservative area of the country that keeps voting Republican for no discernible reason. Today, however, we gathered to conduct our own rally in support of the protesters in Wisconsin.

 I started taking pictures before the rally began, so there are not that many people around at this point. A lot more people joined us as the rally began. Altogether, I'd say there were between 250 and 300 people. Obviously, I didn't interrupt the speeches by running around with my cell phones, taking pictures. 

There were steel workers, teamsters, carpenters, teachers, healthcare workers, retirees. Hardworking, modestly dressed people who believe that there is no democracy without the people's right to enter into collective bargaining to improve their work conditions.

 "We are the middle class," said many of the speakers. These are mostly people of my parents' age who have seen their standard of living decline and the hopes of their children and grandchildren diminish. "I want to make sure that my son and grandson have the same rights and benefits that I did as a union member," said a steel worker.

"This is what democracy looks like!" chanted everybody at the end, echoing the rallying slogan of Wisconsin's protesters. "Welcome to the workers' revolution!" a young union organizer exclaimed. Everybody cheered.

Today, I finally felt that I belong in this town.

P.S. Whenever I turn on the television, I see programs dedicated to some Charlie Sheen character who seems to have gotten himself into some excruciatingly boring trouble. Finding reports of protests across the country is not as easy. We need to cover them ourselves, people. Go to your local rallies, tweet, blog, Facebook, do whatever you need to get the word out. 

Scam?

AT&T is offering me "1000 FREE bonus rollover minutes" to which "standard airtime costs apply" of I call the number they provide. Is it some sort of a scam? Does anybody know? 

If the minutes are free, then how can airtime costs apply to them?

Who Invented Service?

I was solving a crossword puzzle last night and got stuck on the clue that said, "Committees are often this way." "Boring, stupid, useless, ridiculous, a total waste of time" were my immediate responses. None of them, however, had the requisite number of letters to fit the actual response, which was a lot more tame: "ad hoc." Still, once I got on the subject of my hatred of committees, there was no returning to the peaceful crossword puzzle solving.

Every academic is expected to divide his or her working time between activities dedicated to teaching, research, and what is called "service to the university community." While the latter sounds quite noble, in reality it is nothing but tedious paper-pushing. Even when a committee starts out with a task that sounds mildly relevant to our academic lives, a moment always comes when bureaucrats intervene and make a travesty of the whole thing. I always sit at endless committee meetings fuming to the degree where I'm afraid that smoke will start coming out of my ears. Why do I need to waste the time I could have dedicated to reading, doing research, or planning interesting activities for my students on something that has no other use than give yet another bureaucrat an excuse to get their huge salary? Of course, I wouldn't mind giving them much bigger salaries on the condition that they leave me in peace.

As much as I love blaming administrators for every ill under the sun, I am forced to recognize that we, the academics, are just as much to blame for the proliferation of utterly useless service-related activities. During the meetings of our Promotion and Tenure committee where we were deciding on the number of committees we needed to attend, committees on which we needed to "take a leadership role" and publications, everybody was very eager to lower the number of publications and raise the number of committees ad infinitum. My colleagues at a variety of educational institutions across the continent keep complaining about service. However, they participate in committee work with such enthusiasm that I seriously doubt their commitment to committee-hating.

I'm bitter because today I'm due to take a leadership role on one of our committees.

I dream of a day when my research will make me so famous that I will be able to do very little committee work. Other people dream of fame and fortune. As for me, it's freedom from service that I covet.

Argentinean "Intellectuals" Against Vargas Llosa

What I find confusing is the use of the word "intellectuals" in this piece of news:

 Intellectuals close to President Cristina Kirchner launched a campaign Tuesday to stop Mario Vargas Llosa from opening the Spanish-speaking world's largest cultural fair because of his disparaging remarks about Argentine politics. . . Peru's Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel prize for literature, has been invited to inaugurate in mid-April the International Book Fair in Buenos Aires, which UNESCO expects to be attended by more than one million people. The intellectuals are angered over Vargas Llosa's statements on Argentine politics and personal attacks against Kirchner. In a recent interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, the writer, who is an outspoken proponent of free markets and liberal democracy, described Kirchner as "a total disaster." "Argentina is going through the worst form of Peronism, populism and anarchy. I fear that it is an incurable country," he told the newspaper.

Since when do the "intellectuals" ally themselves with politicians who are in power in order to hound a writer for expressing his views? Vargas Llosa does, in fact, have a tendency to espouse unintelligent political beliefs. In this, he is no different from many other writers who make fools of themselves by becoming mouthpieces of barbaric regimes. (Juan Goytisolo immediately comes to mind.) 

Still, no true intellectual would even think of defending some dime-a-dozen politico at the expense of one of the greatest writers of the XXth century. Historically, nothing could be more insignificant than the antics of the Kirchner couple. Vargas Llosa's contribution to the artistic legacy of humanity will remain long after everybody forgets who the Kirchners were. Argentinean "intellectuals" just made themselves look very stupid here.

Thank you, Margaret Soltan, for reporting this.

Cultural Differences: Ladies' Night

One of the things that really surprised me in North America was the tradition of the Ladies' Night.

In my culture, men are a lot more passive and less outgoing. You don't need any gimmicks to get women to visit places. They do it anyways. For decades, all public places have been filled by crowds of women and maybe a few men who were dragged there by their wives. Men are the ones who have to be lured into public spaces. Any event or gathering always suffers from a dearth of men, not women.

Of course, any kind of gender imbalance in this area (as well as in any other) has a host of negative ramifications and a couple of positive ones.

AGRADEÇO O SEU CARINHO...

AGRADEÇO A TODOS QUE PASSARAM POR AQUI E DEIXARAM SUAS MARQUINHAS. ANDO SEM TEMPO. MUITO TRABALHO... MAS NÃO ME ESQUEÇO DE TI...

DEIXO FLORES PARA TODOS.

DESCULPEM PELA AUSENCIA.
MAS LOGO VOU RETRIBUIR A TODOS.
FAÇO AQUI POR ENQUANTO. CARINHOSAMENTE, SANDRA

AGRADEÇO A SUA COMPANHIA!!!

Blog Coletivo-Uma Interação de Amigos-

MEUS MIMOS/SEUS PRESENTES- VOU TE ESPERAR POR LÁ.

Poetas-Um Voo Livre-

Sinal de Liberdade-uma expressão de sentimento-