Archive for November, 2012
Working on the weekend
My office is a difficult place for me to get work done during the week. 9 of us share a space. Between the battle over whether to keep the glaring, buzzing fluorescent lights on or off, the very warm temperature, phone calls, random chit chat, TAs having their office hours, people coming by to ask […]
Music for slow coding on a rainy Saturday night
Understanding Russia through metaphor
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The White Eagle: … all my thoughts seemed to revolve around Ivan Petrovich, that gay living man who had popped out of the ground so suddenly, just like a mushroom in a field after a shower: it is very small, but you can see it from anywhere; everybody looks at […]
Marriage and language skills
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The Left-handed Craftsman: … Platov found it a bit hard to say what he wanted to say in French, because, to tell the truth, Platov wasn’t much interested in French and, being a married man, he thought all French talk silly and hardly worth while.
While you’re waiting for the bus
You can work for UPS if you’ve got a bad back, but not if you’re pregnant. Voter suppression scares the bejeezus out of me. Only rich white folks deserve to vote? I think overcast days are actually rather nice. My biggest obstacle to getting a job outside of academia is that most jobs are utter […]