a slight retraction, and thoughts on eugenics

I had dinner with four lovely colleagues a few nights ago, and after instating a "no talking about work" policy, I had a wonderful, non-maddening time. The German in me generally tends to think that rules can solve any problem (if people would only follow them!) but in this case, it worked. So, I like my classmates, I like it here, I just need breaks from work every now and again.

On to eugenics. Many of you will remember that I indulged myself a few months ago and got Nina's DNA tested for breed composition. The results are in...sort of. Of the 38 breeds they test for (listed below), they only found "significant levels (less than 50%)" of rottweiler, and golden retriever "in the mix." So, either Nina comes from a long line of mutts on both sides, or she's mostly a breed of dog that they don't test for. I was hoping for a more extensive list "in the mix," but it is interesting that they found nothing at all else on their list. No shepherd. No dobie. It feels a bit like we've been living with an impostor (golden retriever??).

They only test the breeds most common to the US, so we've decided that Nina's mostly beauceron, confirming our suspicions that she's French. Beaucerons usually get their ears cropped, but au naturalle, the look like this:

You can see it, right?

A list of what Nina isn't:

Afghan Hound,German Shepherd,Akita, German Shorthaired Pointer, Basenji, Golden Retriever, Basset Hound,Greyhounds, Beagle, Italian Greyhound, Belgian Tervuren, Labrador Retriever, Bernese Mountain Dog, Mastiff, Borzoi, Poodle, Boxer, Pug, Bulldog, Rottweiler,Chihuahua,Saluki, Chinese Shar-Pei,Samoyed, Chow Chow, Shetland Sheepdog, Cocker Spaniel, Shih-Tzu, Collie,Miniature Schnauzer, Siberian Husky, Dachshund, St. Bernard, Doberman Pinscher, Whippet, English Setter, Yorkshire Terrier, Border Collie

the novelty is wearing off

the deer in the back yard was pretty cool, and seeing bunnies and groundhogs frolic about on a daily basis will probably never get old, but I think I totally underestimated the value of having friends around who aren't colleagues. Sometimes, I don't want to talk about work, or what paper might be due soon, or how much reading there is. These issues slowly become as irritating as the "do I look fat in this outfit" question is to a guy. I'm tired of the anxiety--especially because I'm not anxious about this stuff. People run around like they're curing cancer sometimes, and I'm kind of tired of hearing about this or that inconsequential paper or presentation or article they should have read but didn't. And there's no escape! Tony's out of town, and there's no one unconnected anywhere near me. Nina's been getting an earful.

Omer Bartov, Redux

A friend of mine from Tel Aviv pinpointed what irked me so about Bartov's talk: the complexities of public memory were never addressed. She said she'd wanted to ask him what he thought about there being no public memorials in Israel to the Arabs killed by the Israeli army. If you address the property stolen from the Jews int he 1940s, don't you also have to talk about the displacement of Palestinians in Israel today with the same sense of indignation?

She was working with some kids in Israel, and they did this thing where they brainstormed to think of possible solutions to the issues with Palestine. THey drew up a whole list. Some of their suggestions were deliberately outlandish (let's kill them all!), other proposed solutions were more subtle (limited citizenship under the one state). They voted on a final list, and when all was said and done, they were left, more or less, with the Nuremberg Laws. Food for thought.

Empathy and Scholars of Modern Europe

Today, I had class on Fascism and Nazism with the esteemed Professor Rabinbach. In one of our early classes, he chastised (nicely) a fellow student's impulse to kill a bug. He also talked about a colleague of his, another famous historian, who called for "the final solution to the squirrel question" after getting a squirrel infestation in his office; "we must wipe out their eggs!" Today, as an evil cockroach swooped in to terrorize our class, Professor Rabinbach chased it around with a napkin, in order to spare its puny little life and get it out of the room. Actually, he let it run around for a while before it became clear that the rest of us were more concerned with tracing its movements than focusing on discussion. I guess if you spend all your time studying killers, you think twice before squishing the life out of something because the idea of it is inconvenient. I'm impressed.

omer bartov

I saw Omer Bartov give a talk the other day--it was underwhelming. He was talking about his new book, which, based on what I gathered from the talk, looks at public memory of the second world war in Gallacia (Western Present-day Ukraine) in the form of plaques on buildings, memorials, graveyards, and so forth. His point, over and over, seems to be that the testaments of memory are primarily to "Ukrainian" victims of the war, to the exclusion of Jewish memory. Fair enough, but (and he might do this in the book, I don't know) pointing out lingering traces of antisemitism isn't very interesting unless you explain it, which he didn't. The whole evening progressed like a city tour through that part of the world: I went to Lvuv, and they hid the Jewish past, and then I went to the next town, and they built a shopping mall where the synagogue used to be, and then...
...you get the idea. Lots of accusations, no effort to understand or explain. Needless to say, I won't be buying the book.

The night wasn't a total wash, though. As has often happened to me here at Princeton, I met someone whose work I'm completely in awe of, completely unexpectedly, without going out of my way at all. The post "girlcotting herstory" below, inspired by the book 14-18--one of the authors was there. She was lovely.

Nuremberg

Christian Delage just put together an excellent film on the Nuremberg trial, with truly remarkable original footage. It comes out this November. Go rent it. And when you do, answer me this: Why were some of the defendants wearing sunglasses during the trial?