You called home collect and they didn't know your name

Up until about 2330 last night getting stuck into the adolescent psych text; tonight I'm going to go over the syllabus and probably bash out the first couple of reflection papers. I'm not too enthused about the author's take on adolescence and "emerging adulthood" in los Estados Unidos; for one thing, he blithely lumps together all the white and Hispanic ethnic groups into two generic clots, which doesn't speak well to his 1337 sociology skillz and is particularly irritating to me for reasons familiar to you Loyal Readers. (We won't even get into the blacks. OMFG.)

Well, this guy is an academic in the humanities, one of those folks that Neanderthals like Yr. Humble Narrator routinely dismiss as being severely out of touch with the real world, so I don't know why any of this surprises me. Richard Rodriguez, on the other hand...WTF? I know Rodriguez mainly by his reputation as being one of the few Chicano authors that hasn't drunk the Aztlan Kool-Aid, a rejector of bilingual education and a proud defender of assimilation for Mexican immigrants, but this essay on the immigration issue totally pisses away that reputation in favor of a mushy, sentimental comparison of noble, family-oriented Chicano Catholics to selfish, individualistic English Protestants, personified by a stick-figure caricature of Samuel P. Huntington. While I realize that authors of fiction are allowed a little latitude when speaking on politics, Rodriguez' dismissal of the other components of Anglo-American culture (most notably the Germans, Irish Catholics and Scots-Irish, none of whom could be honestly described as WASPs) borders on criminal neglect.He also ignores the rather large (and growing) segment of immigrants whose church of choice is no longer the Catholic Church, but some form of evangelical Protestantism. Victor Davis Hanson is completely correct in calling out Rodriguez on these and other errors of fact as well as holding Rodriguez to account for the ad hominem attacks he once derided.
This is not to say that Rodriguez has nothing useful to say, but you're better off reading VDH's reply immediately afterward to get the necessary balance.

Work was pretty busy today - spent most of it poring through the preliminary invoices looking for Things That Should Not Be (in an accounting sense, that is) and finding a plethora of them. Go me - now I have plenty to discuss at tomorrow's 0900 meeting.

The weekend is starting to fill up. P and I are taking thaadd out to Ichiban for her 29th birthday, with mutual friends of course invited. We're only picking up the tab for her sushi, mind you. Saturday will probably consist of me hauling P around to look at apartments, and Sunday stuckintraffik gets a tour of the local Box Shop. There may be some moving of various boxes from the stuckintraffik apartment to the new chez stuckintraffik as well, but that remains to be seen.

Off to get the truck out of the ramp and go home to beat the authentic assessment assignment into its final form.

You called home collect and they didn't know your name

Up until about 2330 last night getting stuck into the adolescent psych text; tonight I'm going to go over the syllabus and probably bash out the first couple of reflection papers. I'm not too enthused about the author's take on adolescence and "emerging adulthood" in los Estados Unidos; for one thing, he blithely lumps together all the white and Hispanic ethnic groups into two generic clots, which doesn't speak well to his 1337 sociology skillz and is particularly irritating to me for reasons familiar to you Loyal Readers. (We won't even get into the blacks. OMFG.)

Well, this guy is an academic in the humanities, one of those folks that Neanderthals like Yr. Humble Narrator routinely dismiss as being severely out of touch with the real world, so I don't know why any of this surprises me. Richard Rodriguez, on the other hand...WTF? I know Rodriguez mainly by his reputation as being one of the few Chicano authors that hasn't drunk the Aztlan Kool-Aid, a rejector of bilingual education and a proud defender of assimilation for Mexican immigrants, but this essay on the immigration issue totally pisses away that reputation in favor of a mushy, sentimental comparison of noble, family-oriented Chicano Catholics to selfish, individualistic English Protestants, personified by a stick-figure caricature of Samuel P. Huntington. While I realize that authors of fiction are allowed a little latitude when speaking on politics, Rodriguez' dismissal of the other components of Anglo-American culture (most notably the Germans, Irish Catholics and Scots-Irish, none of whom could be honestly described as WASPs) borders on criminal neglect.He also ignores the rather large (and growing) segment of immigrants whose church of choice is no longer the Catholic Church, but some form of evangelical Protestantism. Victor Davis Hanson is completely correct in calling out Rodriguez on these and other errors of fact as well as holding Rodriguez to account for the ad hominem attacks he once derided.
This is not to say that Rodriguez has nothing useful to say, but you're better off reading VDH's reply immediately afterward to get the necessary balance.

Work was pretty busy today - spent most of it poring through the preliminary invoices looking for Things That Should Not Be (in an accounting sense, that is) and finding a plethora of them. Go me - now I have plenty to discuss at tomorrow's 0900 meeting.

The weekend is starting to fill up. P and I are taking thaadd out to Ichiban for her 29th birthday, with mutual friends of course invited. We're only picking up the tab for her sushi, mind you. Saturday will probably consist of me hauling P around to look at apartments, and Sunday stuckintraffik gets a tour of the local Box Shop. There may be some moving of various boxes from the stuckintraffik apartment to the new chez stuckintraffik as well, but that remains to be seen.

Off to get the truck out of the ramp and go home to beat the authentic assessment assignment into its final form.