I had a bad case of insomnia last night. Got to sleep around 4 AM. Fortunately, I didn't have to start work today until 1 PM (although I nonetheless had to work until 8).

I got an e-mail today from the university I from which I deferred last academic year, because funding was tenuous. Now I'm super confused. I have the possibility of getting funding to finish my PhD in Philosophy of Education, I've been thinking about going back and getting me PhD in Mathematical Physics, which would be fully funded at the local university (and would also give me more employment opportunities), and also facing the possibility of getting a full-time job offer after 9 months of applications, making almost as much as a starting professor (depending on their offer). I had nothing for months and months, and now I'm faced with three possibilities, all mutually exclusive. Crap-ola. I'm luckier than many; so don't get me wrong about my indecision. I just wish I had an easier decision; each option has equivalent reasons for and against, and I have no idea how to eliminate even one option. I'm very tired right, now, though, so I'm going to bed.

Oh, I almost forgot. A better porter beer than Sleeman that rivals (perhaps tastes even better than) Black Butte:

Samuel Smith Taddy Porter.

I would keep a stash of this in the firdge if it wasn't so expensive. But, man, that stuff is some of the best I've tasted.

I spoke to some old-schoolers at my job who were around when they first won the union vote with NEA. Turns out my vitriol was a bit misguided (due to someone else misinforming me). Fact is (I guess) that it is a violation of state law for the professors at the community college to strike. I don't yet understand this, because it has always been my understanding that the right to strike was protected under federal law - the National Labor Relations Act. I know that there was a similar reason why the MTA workers in NYC got fined hen they struck. I don't know why the an officer of the local union bargaining unit told me that NEA did otherwise; perhaps he was also misinformed. Nonetheless, I need to talk with a labor lawyer about that.

I'm thinking of going back and getting a graduate degree in mathematical physics here at the state university. It looks as though it is going to be very difficult for me to find a job in education because I am either way over qualified for the job or lacking adequate credentialing for a job. Going back and getting finishing my doctorate in educational theory would likely make things no easier for my wife and I, because two academics finding jobs in the same exact (small) field within driving distance from each other is a rarity indeed. Also, with a graduate degree in mathematical physics, it will be much easier for me to find a job in industry if need be while I wait around for an academic position to open.

But then there's the whole question of leaving middle America. My wife wants to go back to the east coast, and getting into a doctoral program in physics means committing to middle America for at least another 6 years. What to do, what to do? Perhaps I can just start in the masters program and re-assess after two years. Man, I hate the hoop-jumping of credentialing, but I guess I can't expect the world to make exceptions when I'm the exception just because I'm the exception. Fricking world.

First sentence on the first page of "Stocks to Own in 2006":

"Patients and doctors may gripe about managed health care, but investors have no complaints".
- Kiplingers, January 2005.

That just about sums it all up, doesn't it?

I have found it amazing to see which photographs of mine people find interesting on flickr. I put up one photo I never printed or have shown, thinking it too boring, and it's a big hit. Of course, the photos I think are awesome can't get more than a glance. So weird.

I interviewed for a full-time job a few weeks ago, and they have recently started to check my references. This usually means you're 99% hired. This has brought on a wave of reflection and a bit of depression as I start to grapple with the idea of leaving teaching. Oh, I should mention, the job is as an academic and career advisor for a local First Nation. The job sounds really interesting. First and foremost, because I get to work for a native American nation. Second because I would get to help "disadvantaged people" get what they want or need out of a culture and system that still might be somewhat foreign to them. It involves making regular contact with high school and college students of the tribes, and occasionally driving out to the college to make a visit.

What causes me a bit of a downer is that it is just one more step away from being a college teacher. Hell, it doesn't even look likely I can get a job as a community college teacher, which, in my opinion, is fucking ridiculous. You what I find absolutely torpedo-fishing? The fact that the community college is so rigid on hiring faculty that have a masters in their content area, that someone who wasn't even allowed into a chemistry class under quantum chemistry as an undergraduate and got a B in it without ever showing up is somehow deemed incapable of teaching pre-calculus full-time. Let's get something straight about academic credentialing, people. And lets do some fricking basic logic.

Yes, I agree that an academic credential is a good indicator that someone has certain skills and knowledge. BUT the absence of an academic credential DOES NOT prove the opposite. This is called Denial of the Antecedent, and it is a Fallacy of Propositional Logic. And what I can't get is how people who teach college can't understand this. It is quite possible that someone without an academic credential is fully capable of the skills and has the knowledge to carry out the task. What is more infuriating is that one can PROOVE this by teaching the course, and nonetheless they will still want some fricking certificate of hoop-jumping. So here I am - a fricking Mensan who can pick up a math book and teach himself vector calculus - and I can't get a job teaching calculus full-time because I didn't spend $30,000 on a credential.

A mathematician without an understanding of basic logic? How unfortunate. I guess that credential isn't really worth what you thought it was, now was it?

I'm still missing about four negative strips (and thus at least four of my old mounted shots), but otherwise all of my old Ireland photos are up on flicker in the set labeled "Ireland". Enjoy. I must give kudos to my wife, who has been very patient with my obsessing over getting these up on the web.

FYI: I am using a Canon Canoscan 8400F to scan in my old negatives, and I am using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 to tweek them.

Me: Why do we have an administrator as a co-chair of our faculty committee?
Colleague: Well we really haven't had any problems with her.
M: No, I mean, what is the reasoning necessitating having an administrator as co-chair?
C: Well they've been really supportive and we get a budget.
M: Can't they be supportive and give us a budget without requiring power-sharing on the committee?
C: I guess.
M: I mean, if they really were supportive, they would support the committee regardless of whether or not they had power on the committee, right?
C: I guess.
M: Why, then, do we have an administrator as co-chair?
C: Well, we really haven't had any problems with her.
M: What reasoning necessitates us having an administrator as co-chair?
C: I guess there isn't any, but we haven't had any problems, so I don't mind her being there.
M: This isn't a personal problem; it's an ethical question. Administrators and faculty have different interests when it comes to wages, hours and working conditions. So if there's no reason to have an administrative co-chair, and reasons not to have one, why to we have one?
C: Like I said, if we had a bad admin co-chair, I'd be on your side. But she's OK, so I really don't care.

The age of reason has just walked out the door.

True (and sad) story.

Insurgency is on the rise in Afghanistan, and we still haven't found Osama bin Laden. Just thought I'd brush some dirt back out from under the rug. Oh yeah, what ever happened to that stupid color coded terrorist alert thingy we had. Remember that? Red alert, orange alert, yello alert (fusia alert)? Oh, that's right, they dropped that one as soon as Bush got re-elected. I mean, the American people were terrorized into voting for Bush by being threatened with terrorist attacks from others (oh, the itrony), and they did it - they voted for him. "Mission accomplished," right?

My favorite beer of all time is Deschutes Brewery's Black Butte Porter. Unfortunately, it's hard to find east of Colorado. One year (obviously before 9/11) I brought a case on the plane back to Chicago as a X-mas gift to my sister, who was a huge fan. I have since longed to find a Porter that I liked, never really finding anything. . . until recently. I was in my local grocery and decided to try Sleeman Porter.


This is the best porter I've had. I'm no beer connoisseur, so don't expect me to talk about its smell and what hints of what are where. Sleeman Porter has become the staple beer in my fridge. I know it might sound like I'm getting some compensation from them, but I'm not. I'm just excited to have finally found a porter I like since losing access to Black Butte.

The Ireland photos are now posted at my flickr.com account.
I'm not totally happy with a few of them, so a couple might be replaced over the next week. In the meantime, I will be revisiting my box of negatives and pulling interesting photos in order to post them. Wish me luck.

Holy crap. You would not believe what just happened. Immediately after posting the last farewell to my negatives, I went to the large moving box filled with all of my random photos and negatives and picked up a white envelope from a photo company I went to in the Rio Grande Valley that said "reprints 1-8x10 each". I opened it up, and there was each of my missing negatives, individually wrapped in an envelope. I remembered that I had had the photos reprinted for a fundraiser in the Valley (and I had no access to a darkroom, so I had to have them done by someone else). I guess I never put the negatives back whhere they belonged. Thank god(s) I found them. Good thing, too. That place sucked at darkroom reprinting.

For those of you who knew me back at Beloit, one of my primary tasks in digitalizing my negatives was to get my Ireland photos up. When I went to the binder where all of my negatives and proof sheets are for my Ireland photos, I noticed that all of the negatie strips that hold the final prints were missing. The only thing I can think of is that for some reason, I pulled these and put them together in a special sheet. Only problem is I have no idea where that sheet could be. Fortunately, two of the photos were saved, and I posted them to flickr. Nonetheless, this really sucks. I gave away most of my prints, and now the negatives are gone. I think I have a couple of the prints that I never gave away, and I can probably scan those in, but the quality will surely be lacking.

I feel the need to explain a little further my vitriol for the NEA. When I was a k-12 teacher, my school was a closed shop with NEA. Closed shop means that everyone that works there pays dues to NEA regardless of whether or not they choose to be members. Dues were approximately $600 a year. I never saw the NEA. The only time I saw them was when it was membership drive time. Teachers were not given copies of the contract (unless you hunted down a union rep (which was also not visible) and asked for one. This, of course, assumes that you know that you have a contract and that the union bargains for it. I never saw the bargaining team or even knew who they were or whether or not they were all high school people or not. When I was mis-assigned for an entire year, threatening my teaching license, I tried to file a grievance, and the NEA told me that I couldn't (who are 'they' to tell a worker what they can or cannot grieve). So that was my first experience with the NEA.

Secondly, I have fundamental philosophical issues with most craft unions today that are members of the AFL-CIO. 1) Craft unions divide workers into crafts - truckers union, nurses union, janitors union, receptionist union, etc. This makes it easy as hell for management to pit workers against each other. It happens all the time. Example: Nurses strike, Portland, OR c. 2002. Nurses had been on strike for a couple of month. The hospital management had *flown in strikebreakers*, set them up at the Hilton, gave them a private bus to bring them to work every day, paid them more than the regular nurses, and blew, in two months, all of the money the nurses had been asking for over the course of two years. People in Portland started to go elsewhere do to the moral questionability of the hospital's actions. When people stopped coming in, other workers who were not on strike got their hours cut. Then I saw a letter to the editor in the newspaper from a radiologist tech who was bashing the nurses, because *his* hours were getting cut. Divide and conquer is the oldest fricken trick in the book, and the AFL-CIO unions are set up in such a way that they are easily exploitable.

Solution: Organize by industry instead of craft. The medical workers union: includes all people who work in the hospital, so when one group goes on strike, the entire place shuts down. That will end the strike quickly.

2) Craft unions are headed by professionals who are, by and large, not people who have risen through the rank-and-file. These people make six-figures. That's where my fricking $600 a year was going. (due to a federal law I cannot recall the name of the law) I was able to see people making over $200,000 a year on union payroll - these people are in the top 1% income earners, and the union puts them there.

3) Craft unions are run like businesses. They consider themselves a service provider. The Union member pays dues in return for a service of legal support, a negotiator, etc. Many craft unions have left small shops in the lurch, because it will cost them too much to organize (read: they won't profit). These are the shops normally end up coming to the IWW. Furthermore, many employees of unions have tried to unionize and been subject to anti-union tactics by their own union. A union, in essence, is a group of workers acting collectively. That's it. It is not defined as a not-for-profit that spends millions a year lobbying political parties. It is not defined as something that must be sanctioned by the AFL-CIO. When the law protects workers "acting collectively to imrpove wages, hours, or working conditions", there is not a caveate that they must belong to a not-for-profit organizationt that calls itself a union. Five people in a shop, unaffiliated with any "union", collectively going to their employer and demanding sick pay is a union action carried out by a union.

4) Craft unions often dictate to their members what to do. The bargaining team in most unions is comprised mostly of union staffers. These are the people who bargain the contract. When in the IWW, anyone who was a member could show up to the bargaining session, and the workers *themselves* bargained for their demands, not some third party that will decide for themselves what the workers best-interest is. They essentially become an outside party that acts as another management. A benevolent management, but management nonetheless.

More can be read here.

So when you read my vitriol about the NEA or most other craft unions, I'm already starting from a position that they are nothing more than a business that acts as another management and is set up in such a way that workers will be pit against each other. So when I see evidence supporting this (such as my last post about the NEA), I will certainly spit fire.

"As democracy is pefected the office of president represents, more and more closely , the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." - H.L Mencken (1880 - 1956).

So I find out today that the community college union where I work (NEA) somehow bargained away their ability to bargain over hours. Who in their right mind would allow that to happen? Basically the specific article in the contract which defines course load cannot be opened for negotiation unless *both* sides agree to open it for negotiation. Of course, the administration will never want to open it, so the union basically bargained it away.

In the US, unions have the right to bargain over three things (in a nutshell): wages, hours, and working conditions. The bloody NEA bargained away these poor workers' ability to bargain over 1/3 of what they originally had the legal right to bargain over, and, in addition, they agreed to a no strike clause, basically eliminating any teeth the union had left. So now, as teachers, the can basically only bargain over salary, and they have no ability to strike. Good luck. You might as well not be a union any more. I have had a number of experiences with the NEA, and every time they've proved themselves to be toothless panderers to administration. Union my ass.

Hello! We're back from our belated honeymoon safe and rested (at least I feel rested). I have added a link to some of the photos on the right hand side of this page below the links. I forgot how much taking pictures makes me happy. We took my friend Todd J's advice and we bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT before heading off to the Caribbean, and it has allowed me to do more photography than I have done in a long time. What I like about the Rebel XT is that it offers exceptional resolution and does not have a lot of bells and whistles. I can take photos in complete manual mode, add auto focus, set an aperture and have the camera choose the appropriate shutter speed, etc. It works just like my old Nikon FG, but with auto-focus and a digital "film". Another thing I like about it is that I don't have to worry about some hack scratching my negatives (this happened with our marriage photos), the cost of developing, chemicals, darkroom equipment, etc. My photography is very simple, so I can use the simple Rebel XT and the simple editing program that came with the camera. The only adjustments made to the photos in The Gallery are cropping, contrast, lumination and saturation (if its a color shot) - simple chemical darkroom techniques. Being able to once again "do" photography as I used to has made me really happy. It was the best $900 (after rebate) that I ever spent.

This week will be crazy for me. I have to teach a full load for three days at a local liberal arts college, two classes at the community college and two nights at Sylvan. Fortunately, though, there's no more planning for the trip or planning marriage celebrations, etc, it's only for this week, and one of the classes that I'm teaching at the community college I've already taught and have notes for. OK. Time to run. I hope you enjoy the photos.