You know those "useless Humanities" articles that come out all the time?

I'm amused by this ad for a U of C alumni event:
Dinner & Lecture: "Education and Utopia" with Hanna Gray
Tuesday, June 30
Debates over education tend to involve differing views not simply of the curriculum but of the ultimate purposes and futures for which students are to be educated. Those goals often describe a utopian model, one generally employed as a critique of the present state of education and culture. Finally, such recurrent controversies continue, as they have in the past, to center on the question of the liberal arts and the value of a liberal education. And, as always, they begin from a concern that the sustenance of this value is seriously threatened by contemporary trends and priorities. Join fellow alumni at the Hanover Inn, 2 South Main Street, for this timely and engaging discussion.

You can just hear how sick and tired the copywriter is of this same old same old debate.
I must admit a bit of pride and a lot of amusemement to think this is likely to be something U of Cers will be discussing for generations to come, kind of the way people now lament that people don't read enough, or don't read the right things enough...

Beni

Well, now that I'm about to leave Boston, I think I'm beginning to like this place. It's always like that, isn't it?

I've begun my tour of "Things I won't really be able to do when I'm in Ann Arbor" and one of them is buy day-caught, fresh lobster on my way home from work for $6.99/lb. Yes, that's right. Live lobster costs less here per pound than organic, free range chicken and less than most other seafood.

And on that note, I've made a resolution that each week, I will find a different way to cook lobster until I leave.

So far, on my list of methods is:
Grilled
Poached (in coconut cream or regular cream with butter, I can't bring myself to use so much butter to poach just in butter, a la Thomas Keller--any other ideas?)
Stir fried (I'm going to attempt something I once had in Cambodia here....we shall see. It's lobster stir fried with a coconut/pork/curry sauce.)
Any other ideas?

If any of you are in Boston, you are invited to the grand experiment. I don't promise the lobster will be good, but it will probably taste like lobster, so how bad could it be?

my wife found an interesting article from the "guardian" newspaper website...
[since the link to the "guardian" is apparently a blacklisted word for this server, please do a search on "guardian" and "the books we only say we've read" to find the article]

people tend to lie about ever reading a book because it'll make them seem smarter... right?

i love how the bible made it to the top 4 for the UK...

an interesting question came to mind... what would the US list look like?

we came up with the following list (in no particular order):
- walden
- catch-22
- hamlet

what do you think?

Link: http://www.ustream.tv/videoplayerpopup/channel/317016

A very zen puppy-viewing experience.

I found one of those ocean-side shacks--NEAR MY OFFICE (which granted, is right near the ocean in Boston)--that sells live, fresh lobsters for $8.99/lb. $8.99 a pound! That's what Whole Foods charges for TILAPIA (around these parts anyway). (And they were tasty too, although too much butter for me). I could pick up fresh lobsters for $8.99/lb on my way home from work!

$8.99! I think this means lobster once a month now. Also, lobster bisque. And lobster and corn chowder. And lobster stock fish soup.

So, if anybody is visiting Boston, let me know, and you should come to my house and we'll make lobster!

Beni

Link: http://www.griffith.edu.au/griffithreview/campaign/apo/apo_ed16/Pearson_ed16.pdf

Whenever I feel as if I am falling into a depression, one of the things that I feel helps to bring me out of it (beyond, of course, the great care of my friends, family, and colleagues; good food; exercise; and most importantly, sunshine) is to read really, really depressing early 20th century European literature and also post-WWII era stuff(excluding Sartre, which I find is more depressing, but I haven't yet figured out exactly why). My usual roster of comfort reading includes items such as Camus' The Plague, the essays of Natalia Ginzburg, Orwell but especially Homage to Catalonia, and other books of that ilk. (Do those make up an 'ilk' to anyone else? They do to me, but I don't know what I'd call it. There must be a name. Maybe 'Against Nazis and Totalitarians?)

Other kinds of literature can help to stave off a depression with magical realism, parallel universes, sex, celebrity, sharp humor, or whatever, but there is something about the bleakness of war and struggles with morality, responsibility, and death (always death) that somehow manages to ultimately break me out of a funk in a different way than say, a bag of Dove dark chocolate eggs, could possibly hope to. Why is this?

Is it because there's nothing so easy, in some ways, as being against the Nazi's?

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Without any doubt, the hardest part about going to Cambodia is coming back. There's the 12 hour jetlag. There's the fact I almost inevitably return with a cold and have to take much care to eat well and not get sick. And the fact that my fridge is empty. Also, I find that there are small but important elements of my life back here in the US that suddenly seem intolerable.

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I don't want to move Beni's cool post too far down the front page, so most of this will be after the jump.

Having gotten in super late on Sunday, I woke up pretty late on Monday, the day of Christmas Eve. I was feeling a bit like crap, so I investigated prices at the spa. Not only were the prices absurd, but there weren't any availabilities for the rest of the time I was in Vegas. Mostly this was because of abbreviated hours for Christmas on the next two days. Bah.

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It's been a curious trip this time around, a little uninspiring frankly. Usually, there are a handful of things that never fail to cheer me up when I come to Phnom Penh: 1) delicious fresh fruit shakes, 2) shopping at the markets, 3) going to the spa and getting a massage for $20 or less, and 4) meeting up with friends and family and artists.

But recently, I just have not been much craving the fresh fruit shakes; I have been totally uninterested in the shopping (I can't have anything tailored, boo!, because the timespan is too short, and everyone I know is too busy). When I first got off the plane, and my body was achy, a massage was very nice. But I more recently got a massage and you know, it was kind of boring. The part that I enjoy most about the fancy spas is being able to take a nice shower with WARM water and not just cold water in a beautiful setting. (I know, I know. Boo-hoo me. The freshly made longan or banana nougatine shakes don't seem novel anymore and the $20 massages in a cool tropical garden seem a little boring. Yeah, Life is so hard.)

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The candidates are (seeding done by Excel generating random numbers):

1) Vancouver
2) Montreal
3) Vermont
4) Aspen
5) Napa
6) Savannah
7) The Berkshires
8) Mexico
9) Caribbean
10) Miami
11) Portland
12) Wisconsin
13) Seattle
14) UP Michigan
15) Las Vegas
16) Key West

I've been told that doing coin flips would be cool, by one person, and stupid by another. Unfortunately I've got to go with the person who said stupid. So it's standard bracket time, with justification. (Boring!)

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