When you say “socialism,” several things come to mind. The first are the most famous socialists of them all, Germany’s National Socialist party of yore, the goose-stepping Nazis who carved a deep wound into the fleshy world psyche. The second is Mussolini. I also think of the current Spanish government. Then I think of my cruel first grade teacher who once caught me with a bag of candy corn that I brought to school as a lunch snack (that I paid for with my own money). She made me distribute it evenly to every kid in my class “to be fair.”

In a column at The Chronicle of Higher Education, the pseudonymous Kathryn Ryan worries about going on the job market at her age: I've rewritten my CV yet again. This time I've eliminated all those pesky dates that might allow people to guess my age. I went back and forth for a long time on that one, and I'm still not entirely comfortable with my choice. Besides feeling slightly deceptive, I realize that the strategy could backfire and that search committees will probably assume that I am much older than I am. She's 36.