It's been a while since I wrote anything of substance. About a week and a half ago, my hard drive took a major nosedive: critical mechanical failure; there was no saving it. Fortunately, all of my documents were backed up on my LaCie external drive (by the way, if you buy one of these for an Apple, make sure you update the firmware on LaCie's sight). Apple was awesome about it. I had about 3 months left on my extended warranty, so they paid for everything, including shipping. I mailed it off on a Friday, and I had it back on Tuesday. Amazingly quick!

I then reinstalled all the software, and copied all my important files from the hard drive, erased and reformatted the external drive, and then copied the entire boot-drive onto the external. One of the peculiar things I noticed was that right before my supercrash, my HDD had about 23 GB used on it. After getting a new drive and reinstalling everything I had on it before, the new HDD had only 8 GB on it. What in the world was all that other crap? I know Windows has a habit of laying trash all over the place on one's hard drive, but I found it odd to happen on a Unix-based system.

My laptop now runs better than it has in about a year. I think this problem was one that was slowly happening beneath the surface, and one day it just couldn't work around the file corruption form a failing read/write thingamajig (this word was in my spell-check!).

It's surprising how wiping out your hard drive and reinstalling everything can make your old computer look and feel brand new. Back-up all your important stuff, first, of course.

So now I'm back online, but I don't have much to say other than this Saturday has been one of the most relaxing I've had in a while. A few days ago I got to touch base with my friend K who I haven’t talked to a while, and we shot the breeze about Heidegger, science and technology, and how Doug Martsch can rock like he was raised on '70s 30-minute guitar jam music.

I also got to see my friend L, who is out studying birds on a military base that occasional treats him as some Arab terrorist for the purposes of training. He gets to do the work he loves and hang out outside, which in my opinion rocks pretty hard (almost as hard as Doug Martsch).

My buddy M dropped a line from the foot of the Rockies. Haven't heard from that guy in way too long. Even though our conversation was short, it was good to at least touch base.

I'm still working two jobs, barely paying my end of the expenses (I'm probably not even close, actually). Still applying for jobs all the time, but nothing has taken a bite. I honestly think I have no choice but to go back and finish my PhD or to go back and teach highschool, and I rather sleep in a cardboard box than do the latter. It's not that I don't like working with HS kids, I just don't like being responsible for 160 every day, not having any weekends or nights to myself, and getting paid crap to do it.

My next-door neighbor teaches at our local high school. his raise next year will be 2%. Figure in inflation at 3%, and he just took a pay cut. On top of it, he has to pay $400 a month out of his meager pay to cover health insurance *just for himself* (his wife pays $400 for her own through her employer). It's really shameful. Teachers shape the future of our communities, our nation, and our world, and they ought to be treated as such not only in word *but in deed*. So let's stop the bullshit lip service people and start paying our teachers instead of chasing chimeras in the deserts of the Middle East.

Taken from Design Anarchy by Kalle Lasn:

Never go to art school. Never go to New York. Never rent a loft. Dump your fonts folder. Forget symmetry and colour coordination. Stop taking text from an editorial that you don’t read and packaging it in eye-catching ways. Walk away from your computer. Then take off. Go to India, rural China, Rio, Caracas, Belize. Mingle with the filthy rich and the dirt poor. Dig up all of the roots of terror. Make hunger, disease, cruelty, lust, greed, self-preservation and genocide your roommates. Then, when you run out of money and can’t take it anymore, fly back home. Look in the mirror. Face your fears, your weaknesses, strengths, your imminent demise. Then when all of this begins to gel into a master narrative in front of your eyes, go get a job.

The following is distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services
Copyright (c) 2005 Holly Sklar. It was found posted on the website for Democratic Socialists of America. The entire article can be read here.
". . . Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston puts the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else in stark perspective. He examined the income reported on tax returns of the top 0.01 percent -- about 14,000 households with at least $5.5 million in income.

From 1950 to 1970, for every additional dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162.

From 1990 to 2002, for every additional dollar earned in the bottom 90 percent, those at the top brought in an extra $18,000.

If you are feeling financially down this holiday season, there's a good reason. Average workers have been earning less after inflation, not more. Average hourly earnings dropped 5 percent, adjusting for inflation, between 1979 and 2004 -- while domestic corporate profits rose 63 percent.

The share of national income going to wages and salaries is at the lowest level since 1929 -- the year that kicked off the Great Depression. The share going to after-tax corporate profits, which heavily benefit wealthy Americans through increased dividends and capital gains, is at the highest level since 1929.

Income gaps in the workplace have become increasingly outrageous, as seen in the growing gap between worker pay and CEO pay. We can demonstrate it with a pile of chocolate.

Give 1 piece of chocolate to your worker stand-in and 44 pieces to your CEO stand-in. That was the 1980 ratio of average full-time worker pay to average pay among CEOs in Business Week's survey of major corporations.

For the equivalent 2004 ratio, give 1 piece of chocolate to the worker and 362 to the CEO."

Democrat or Republican, they're both allowing things to get worse.

Who said the following?

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Answer: The REPUBLICAN President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. It makes Clinton look like a fascist. Say what Eisenhower said now, and you'll get pejoratively labled a communist. Just shows you how far to the right this nation has gone. See his whole speech here.

From adbusters.com:

Traditional conservatives, especially libertarians, called on us to protect our liberties. Neoconservatives call on us to surrender them in the name of homeland security. Traditional conservatives distrusted democracy and praised stability. Neoconservatives make the expansion of democracy abroad the license to diminish democracy at home and argue that America should “make trouble in the world.” Traditional conservatives had a commitment to balanced budgets and small government. Neoconservatives seek to expand government, into airports, libraries and homes. Nothing expands a government like a war.

I did not get that full-time job. With such the glut of PhD's where I live, businesses and community colleges require a much higher level of credentialing for their jobs. What one might need only a BA for in one part of the country, one needs an MA or PhD here. Having just an MA has made finding a job in education hard (believe it or not). I could go back to teaching HS, but I think I'd rather sleep on the street.

So, after 9 months of looking for a full-time job, I have yet to get an offer (although I did get a whopping 1 interview). Essentially, I need a PhD to get a job that pays over $34,000 a year. This leaves me with two possible choices:

1) Finish my PhD in Philosophy of Education (this is the degree I started for a year before bailing for financial reasons); or

2) Start a new PhD in Physics

The first option is contingent on my currently "deferred" university giving me funding (which at this point is not known). The second option is contingent on me getting in (which is not known). So I guess I'll first see if I get funding for Philosophy of Education. If that falls through, I'm pretty much left with trying to get my PhD in Physics here at the State University. This will require a whole other application process, taking the Physics GREs, and 6-8 years of my time, but I might have no choice other than to start over in another field.

Word.

I finally figured out why it is that I've been so frustrated and confused by my colleagues' behavior in the community college. The community colleges in my state are directed by the Department of Education, just as k-12 schools are, and they are organizationally the same. Teachers are called professors and vice principals are called deans, but there is no faculty governance, no faculty oversight in hiring (a dean with a degree in chemistry hires professors of math, and deans with degrees in history will hire professors of philosophy), faculty are completely devoid of any power and are not treated as equals but rather subordinates, and that's exactly the way things are set up in k-12 schools (even though faculty are required to have masters degrees in their subject area and not in education). The legislature rules it, the administrators "administer the legislation", and the faculty are just factory workers carrying out the orders of the day. Challenge to authority is looked down upon and so is questioning policy. "This is a college", my ass. I work at a glorified high school. I honestly think it should be called a "post-secondary school" I think that more accurately describes it rather than call it a "community college". What ever happened to the democracy in this nation after the industrial revolution is beyond me - democracy was usurped by dictatorship of the State and Capital. I work at an institution of the "Department of Workforce Preparation" (I'm not kidding) that calls itself a "college". I'm glad to hear that education is seen as a means of creating the productive laborer. Did I mention dictatorship of State and Capital (I chose the conjunction and for a reason)?

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