Spreewaldgurken

Our local COOP may have kimchi but I guess Spreewald gherkins are still further ahead on the globalization index. Nevertheless, I made a Sauerkraut soup with smetana and gherkins as toppings for dinner while reading the January issue of Monocle that features the mascot Kumamon. Luckily, I had a spare glass of Irony from dreamy Monterey lest anyone would dare to take any of this seriously.

After coming up with the Somewheres/Anywheres distinction, David Goodhart is now busy telling people that they do not belong at university. This misanthropic and elitist view of human nature is as wrong today as it was two centuries ago. That is not the same as saying that everyone has to have a doctorate or even a graduate degree, but our priority should be on opening, rather than closing, doors. Besides, being a university professor myself, I can tell that much in the academic world is just surface and pretence, so some cognitive humility would definitely not be misplaced.