Oh, Academia, You Won’t Miss Me Either, Will You?

Here is a summary of why I really really hope I can find meaningful livelihood outside of academia, in one event:
(Background: Long-time readers will know that I became unemployed when the college at which I held my most recent 1-year contract decided to eliminate my position altogether.)
The college has been forced to cancel the classes [...]

The End of Times!

At least they’re funny this time…  From the web site over at the Landover Baptist Church (I’ll just put on a screen shot rather than post a link here to anything associated with them):

…
Alternately, you could just think of women as, you know, real people with, um, you know, uh, brains and amazing athletic abilities [...]

Free Textbooks

(No, I’m not giving any away, sorry…)
Again today with an interesting item from Slashdot: Open-Source College Textbooks Gaining Mindshare.
I’ll relist the links from that blurb here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-textbook18-2008aug18,0,4712858.story
http://www.mcafee.cc/Introecon/NSSP.html
http://www.calstate.edu/ats/digital_marketplace/
http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/statement.asp?id2=37614
I hope to anybody’s god that’s listening that open source and free-use textbooks become one of the norms across college campuses.  I think among the most common, early, jading, gut [...]

Creativity, Computers, and Manual Labor

Update:  I edited this post to submit as a writing sample offline on 9/18/08.  I’ve decided to post the revisions – most are related to style, none of them are substantive changes.

Today, Slashdot brought up an interesting topic regarding the (perhaps small) resurgence of manual labor and processes in the design fields: hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/08/17/205232.shtml.
The post points [...]

It’s Not their Bodies, it’s the Money

Speaking about men’s gymnastics, one of the announcers commented on the growing trend of “older” competitors in the sport.  My immediate thought was that it must reflect improvements in sports medicine.  But, the guy on the TV said this:
In this day and age, the atheletes are able to support themselves with gymnastics, allowing them to [...]

Thoughts on Synchronized Diving

I heard someone say that men’s synchronized diving seems “gay”.
Solo diving doesn’t.
I wonder, what does that say about the way men are supposed to work together in our culture?  (Or aren’t supposed to work together.)
I didn’t bother to ask if there’s anything “lesbian” about women’s synchronized diving.  Of course, by the same norms, there isn’t.
I’ll [...]

Applying for Government Jobs

So, I took a couple of days of doing nothing to take my mind off of the general stresses of being unemployed; trying to change careers from academia but staying within the arts…  Oh, yeah, that’s why so many artists cling to their professorships so defiantly…
I vegetated, tired of TV very quickly, read, [...]

Unemployment Sets In…

Until some point yesterday or the day before it, I was really enjoying the leisure time associated with my unemployment.  I have some (i.e. some) savings.  And, although I’ve never actually had a summer off, as a higher ed. teacher I usually did something different over the summer and so I associate these months with [...]