The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Yet another. Without end.


This month:

• Keep working on streamlining T1; it would be nice to get close to done, because it's sucking up too much time.
• Referee report
• Comments for acquaintance
• Work on the new book
• Email other co-translator about starting T4

Today: Just T1.

Some or all of Jerome Slater's Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020?

Good morning!

Past genius with pangrams so far.  Yesterday we had team QB.  I think I needed help with a couple words I might usually get, like affiant, afoot, fiat.

No luck on LB yet again!

I hope it's just the screen and is not too much money and hassle, ciao_yall!

Langue_doc, we keep looking for him/her, but the tree is a mesquite, and the foliage colors of green and yellow make it hard to spot some of these folks.  The sound was very close in the tree, but no luck.  We didn't see any birds nearby today, but it was a bit windy.

Happy solving!

Certainly not my field, but I found this to be an interesting read from the perspectives of both sides.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/magazine/israel-founding-palestinian-conflict.html?searchResultPosition=2

Quote from: the_geneticist on April 26, 2024, 02:47:30 PM

Quote from: evil_physics_witchcraft on April 26, 2024, 06:20:25 AMStudent missed the final exam because stu mixed up the days. I understand that things happen, but I've been talking about this exam for the past two weeks, posting about it online and oh, it's in the syllabus. I guess it would have helped if stu came to class more often...

Edit: Should I take pity on stu and allow a makeup with penalty? Damn, this kind of thing always gets me in trouble though...

I'd let them take it in my office.  My chair would NOT have my back if I said they earned a 0 on the final exam.

We're 'encouraged' to help students pass. I should have looked at the student's grade before even considering this. Stu would not have passed the course with a 100% on the final.

Update:  FOUR eggs in the robin's nest!

My Middle East course is coming up in its regular rotation. Given Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7 and the aftermath, I'll be revising the syllabus. I'm curating a list of potential additions/substitutions. Let me know if you have any recommendations. My current list includes:

• Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib, "Behind Hamas's Bloody Gambit to Create a 'Permanent' State of War," The New York Times, 9 November 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html.
• Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman, "'Buying Quiet': Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas," The New York Times, 10 December 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html.
• David Brooks, "The Missed Chance for Peace," The New York Times, 12 October 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/israel-palestinians-gaza-peace.html.
• Bret Stephens, "Sheryl Sandberg Screams Back at the Silence," The New York Times, 30 April 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/opinion/screams-before-silence-sheryl-sandberg.html.
• Barnett R. Rubin, "False Messiahs," Boston Review, 4 January 2024, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/false-messiahs/.

I also plan to again use Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, 2020.

Students at my university are mostly ill-informed and apolitical. Few can locate Israel on a map. So I'm not interested in dense, badly written academic literature.

I am not interested in debating the war itself in this thread. If you want to opine about it, start a General Discussion thread. 

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on April 01, 2024, 10:37:12 AMNew month, new(ish?) goals!

For me:

• Finally finish straggling book chapter.
• Comment on an acquaintance's projected reply to a paper of mine.
• Start streamlining translation 1.
• Start a new book chapter.

Stretch:

• Start work on a chapter contribution due in August.

Well. I decided to concentrate on T1 to get it off my plate sooner. It's taking forever though.

I did referee a couple of papers, which added some work. Oh well. I'll try again next month!

Did some of T1 today. Looking forward to doing a goodly chunk tomorrow. Hopefully.

I've attended two of them. Both were pleasant and entertaining. It certainly was not a waste of time. The first one that I attended was more like a traditional reunion, in that social media had not taken over yet as the primary medium for staying connected with people from high school. I caught up with people that I had not heard from in years. I maintained contact with them via social media. I was not an early adopter of social media, but after the reunion event, I went all in.

The organizers for the second more recent reunion that I attended were brilliant, in that they acknowledged how social had media replaced a lot of what high school reunions were used for, so the reunion event was shorter, much less formal, and a lot cheaper. I even brought SO Lightning. Folks were friendly. Any enmity or anxieties from the old days did not re-surface.

I'll be honest. Returning to a high school reunion as a tenured full professor at a widely recognized university with recognized D1 athletics, was an ego boost, when re-connecting with the "cool" kids and my clique of "smart" kids, both of whom peaked & had their best years of their life in high school . . . . .

There, I said it. Hate me.