Two Reasons to Be Irritated at Mexico's Paper of Record

El Universal has a new feature enabled that seems aimed precisely at people like me: you can no longer highlight large sections of their opinion pieces, so as to copy and translate them in a blog post. This, in turn, makes translating sections of op-ed pieces much more time-consuming. I don't know what the specific strategy behind this is beyond the vague sense of, "F' the bloggers", but it's rather frustrating. And odd that it's just for opinion pieces.

Second, El Universal has evidently contracted the services of Elba Esther Gordillo as an opinion columnist. I like the fact that the paper courts political leaders for their op-ed page, even if they only write self-serving nonsense much of the time. It's often revealing self-serving nonsense, and it generally gives me the chance to make fun of their writing and feel superior, which is an added bonus. However, Gordillo's three first efforts --titled Can the educational system generate quality?; What role does the teacher play in educational quality?; and, What role does the teacher play in educational quality? II-- are simply too nonsensical a brand of self-service to warrant publication. I can't translate the whole thing (see above), but I defy you to read today's effort and show me any attempt whatsoever to link teaching activities to educational quality. I'm fairly certain neither teaching activities nor educational quality is even mentioned directly. It's simply aimless pablum.