Study: Math Profs Are Huge Nerds

I remember seeing my English professor walking in a 3-man circle with a picket railing against Afghanistan in between classes. Nothing wrong with free speech and expression of dissent, but I remember thinking it undignified and unbecoming of an intellectual to publicly parade his sentiments in the style of a Union Square hobo. But hey, 100 years from now, this guy will be lauded as math reformer. They'll be building statues to him in the United States of Iraq while Bohemigrant's bits and bytes crumble in a void of online oblivion like a stale chocolate-chip cookie.

Santana a met

Johan Santana a met? It seems a tentative agreement has been reached between the Mets and the Twins. Santana's agent has to agree to a deal with the Mets before the trade is official.
I was just listening to Steve Summers on WFAN when a string of Yankee fans called in and complained. "CASHMAN SHOULD BE FIRED! WHY DIDN'T THEY TRADE HUGHES AND KENNEDY! SANTANA'S THE BEST PITCHER IN THE LEAGUE!"
It's morons like these that that make the Yankee fans look like spoiled jerks. Hughes and Kennedy proved themselves to be possible number 1 starters for years to come. Santana (who isn't a big guy) is clearly on the decline, and not only that, he will want a 6 or 7 year contract. NONE of those contracts turn out well. Remember the Dodgers and Kevin Brown? or the Giants and Barry Zito?
I'm glad Santana didn't go to Boston.

Bohemigrant Yaks!

Nothing more manly than these dudes.

What's Eating Vermont?

The state is admittedly a beautiful place to ski. But what's in that Ben 'n Jerry's, yo?

How all the good convocation speakers roll

LOL Lt. Murtaugh

This looks like the work of no-good punk kids

I am definitely getting old, cause this would definitely bring out a south asian-bashing tirade out of me now.

Yawwwwn

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/33364.html

What the Heck?

So Cruise is finally losing it over the Web. What to think of this? Why are respectable celebrities so drawn to the cult of the Scientist? John Travolta? Anne Archer? Beck? Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson)? Chick Corea? Doug E. Fresh? Paul Haggis? Jason Lee? Juliette Lewis? What, even funnyman Jerry Seinfeld dabbled a few years back? 'Tis true! Hear yee, hear yee!

Physical Fitness Greeting!

Politicking

This being 2008, Bohemigrant Blog will predictably devote a good amount of blogspace to presidential politics. Few public spectacles are as entertaining or, dare I say it, exciting. We have, for the first time, the possibility of a woman or a black man becoming leader of the (for the time being) free world. We also have the clear and present menace of a populist huckster pitching his patronizing sermons on wealth disparity.

On the republican side, we have a bona fide war hero with principles, a celebrity mayor whose common-sense politics don't fit his party's mantra, an unctuous, joke-cracking preacher, and a morphing Mormon opportunist. Sadly, the possibility of a Huckabee- or Romney-Edwards election is all too real, denying Bohemigrant an opportunity to vote in his first presidential campaign ever.

Still, with mounting suspense (see Bloomberg's teasing maneuvers), we should have one of the most exciting elections to date. And we're off!

Best/Worst

To continue the rundown of 2007's greatest hits and misses, I give you the top shows, as judged by Bohemigrant's theater and entertainment editors:

1. La Vie (Spiegeltent)
2. Fuerzabruta
3. The Seafarer
4. The Farnsworth Invention

Worst attraction: Bodies (read an anatomy textbook instead)

Happy New Year Weekend Everyone!

Now watch this baby say "truck."

Man Bites Dog

The story of 2007!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071228/tc_nm/dating_dc

Wonderful Tragedy

Something struck Bohemigrant the other day: like it or not, the Holocaust is chiefly responsible for keeping mainstream Judaism alive into the 21st century. Ironically, if not for Hitler's pesky little plans to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the Earth, the partially successful mission resulted in the kind of Jewish resurgence the world had never known. Without the WWII genocide, the German reform movement that engulfed much of European Jewry in the 19th and early 20th centuries would surely be whittling away synagogue attendance through social assimilation and liberal political mobility. The Orthodox (as they surely still will) would become the stewards of the Jewish tradition.

Instead, the impossible to ignore (thanks to mass media and the Jews' growing political power) massacre effected the most unintended and unprecedented of consequences: A Jewish state drawn up overnight and mandated by world powers. A Jewry wielding the (temporary) power of guilt that, along with their rapidly expanding geopolitical and economic capital, gave it strong sway over the foreign policy of the world's greatest superpower. The Jews effectively came under the protection of the toughest kid on the street (or the world's greatest bully, according to some). Without the Holocaust, God's chosen might still be, in a relative sense, "sucking their paws" as the Russians say.

Why is this important? Secular and reform Ashkenazi Jews, the ones threatening assimilation over half or more of the race, are the ones with the talent, success, the cachet. The Orthodox, more often than not, are the poor students, the nuisances, the radical extremists. How long would a group of bearded yokels dressed, as a friend of the blog might say, like 17th-century Lithuanian nobility, be able to effectively lobby a government for protection from the vicissitudes of Jewish existence? What pride would they inspire beyond the undistinguished pride of faith? Would there be a Jewish state? A Jewish army? The keepers of the Torah, like the Hassidic anti-Zionists smooching Iran's president, are more concerned with breeding and eschewing pork than they are with preserving the dignity and legacy of an ancient people.

Rootless, survival becomes a goal, not a source of pride. Today, we build museums to commemorate our resilience. We honor fallen heroes and celebrate our victories. Thousands of years into human existence, we are still God's chosen people. And we have the Holocaust to thank for it.

Russian New Year's Special

Russia, You've Arrived

music fobbery

this has been an exhausting semester and year for me, so i can't really say anything conclusive or comprehensive about the year in music. anyway, here are some of the albums i enjoyed the most this yr (no particular order):

okkervil river: the stage names (best track: unless it's kicks)
radiohead: in rainbows (best track: videotape)
the national: boxer (best track: fake empire)
arcade fire: neon bible (best track: intervention)
lcd soundsystem: sound of silver (best track: new york i love you)
the ponys: turn the lights out (best track: double vision)
beirut: the flying cup club (best track: nantes)
sunset rubdown: random spirit lover (best track: for the pier (and dead shimmering))
spoon: ga ga ga ga ga (best track: the underdog)

and here are some trax i really enjoyed (not off of any of the aforementioned albums):

voxtrot: blood red blood
aesop rock: none shall pass
pharoahe monch: desire
electrelane: to the east
los campesinos!: you! me! dancing!
frog eyes: bushels
cajun dance party: the next untouchable
menomena: muscle 'n flo
les savy fav: the year before the year 2000
misha: summersend
fiery furnaces: my egyptian grammar
white rabbits: the plot

Vox Populis

Social commentators often unfit to comment socially often overstate the case against modern crowds. Are we duller, dumber, less demanding than previous generations? Or are we sharper, savvier, more critical? Watching the end of No Country for Old Men the other night, one could hear the groan from the full house enjoying I Am Legend across the megaplex.

Harp as I might on the banalities of herd mentality and the LCD. I'd rather focus on the tragedy of low expectations. Now, we all know what a reliable majority of the small audience (who earned points by even coming to a showing of the Coen brothers flick at the blockbuster-driven UA theater) wanted at the end, despite all logic and faith to adapted text: the cleanest, tidiest ending possible to make up for 2 hours of disturbing, unapologetic violence. As the genre shift from noir to western back to noir jerked the audience back and forth, they became that desperate gambler trying to break the ball in a spinning roulette wheel away from the force of inevitability to land on a single number.

After all, they invested a long time in coming to this rarefied movie--not the crime caper or quirky comedy the Coens have been known to make in the past--certainly not the zombie flick or CGI fantasy their friends had opted for. They even sat through the slow pacing, the drag of the dialog, all the way through the unsatisfying conclusion, all the while getting their wads ready to blow at the payoff point. But it never came...at least not in the way they expected.

With the modern gimmickry of the last decade and a half, audiences have gotten used to slick editing, narrative shifts, and all manner of twists. How is it that these audiences still expect the most prosaic coup de grace in a movie whose mood and trajectory, enigmatic as it might be, has been firmly established in the first act? Vin Diesel and The Rock are expected to come through and annihilate their enemies. We usually know that Mel Gibson will stick a flagpole through a Redcoat's windpipe at the end of a revolutionary revenge epic. Yet how can we expect the same in a movie whose stakes, if not higher, at the very least like on a different emotional plane. Never mind that--give us payoff or give us death!

All my dreams revolve around eating

I don't get it, I usually don't have very lucid dreams. For a long time, I barely had dreams where anything happened at all. But lately in all of my dreams, I'm always about to eat a huge meal, craving a huge meal, or somewhere with a lot of potential to have a huge meal. As an SF vagrant (and old running joke) might say, "what does it all meeeeann?" Do I want to become a super fatass? Am I unfulfilled? Do I not eat enough? WHAT IS MY SUBCONSCIOUS TRYING TO TELL ME? I'M SO CONFUSED I MIGHT WATCH ELF AND THEN OLD SCHOOL.

Eastern Medicine

Wouldn't you have to be mad to run against One Russia?