Bloodless Coup

One thing about the growling... I assign Friedman so my students can see how many people think about globalization, and then make them read "real IR" so they can see how shallow Friedman's understanding is. Damned if they all don't love him, and cite him like crazy in their papers. Argh.

Shallow = easy.

Also shallow = neat and tidy. No pesky loose ends, unexplained phenomena, or annoying white-guilt trips. And plenty of smugness.

Oh, yes, the smugness. I had forgotten that (or blotted it out). How did that man win a Pulitzer?

When you're a columnist for The Paper Of RecordTM, a Pulitzer every ten years or so is a matter of entitlement.

Speaking of grading - why do so many students think peruse means pursue? I must have seen that in at least 3-4 papers so far.

My own theory is that they misspell a bunch of words (and don't correct as they go). Then, at the end, they hit the "correct all" button on the spell-checker, and don't read it over. As a result, the computer "best guesses" their word, and you end up with some interesting not-really-English sentences.

I see this one alot*, too.

(*Note: intentional error. Please do not snark.)

Boarders. We have to protect our boarders from terrorists. Who, apparently, have something against surfers.

If we don't have enough boarders, then wealthy Republicans who own tenements won't have enough tenants to pay the mortgages and they'll default and then the world financial system will collapse and the terrorists will have won!

And something else that I'm seeing all the time - the kids today, they have no clue how to capitalize and use proper nouns. My favorite phrase this afternoon mentioned a certain "green member of the European Parliament".

I don't get that but I do Get the random middle of the Sentence capitalization.