Sick, Sick, Sick!
This is the sickest thing I've ever seen, ever.
Ana's Underground Grotto

Particularly revolting is the Background/Philosophy page

Apparently this is not a unique website:articles have been written about this "movement."

It's just sick.

GESOld, Finally.
Now Playing: Chopin
During the last week of classes, GESO, the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, will go on strike in hopes of getting recognition as a union by the administration. Here I have a confession to make. For a long time, despite my "Very Liberal" tag on TheFacebook.com, I was skeptical of GESO. In general, I think unions are good and Yale's administration is kind of stingy, but to me the concept of a union for graduate students struck me as...well, odd. These people come to Yale to climb up the ladder of academia, they get paid, and they complain because they have to teach? Teaching is an essential component of becoming an academic -- it's not only the grad students who have to juggle teaching with their own research; junior faculty members have it even harder in this publish-or-perish world. I couldn't make myself feel sorry for these TAs. Sure, they're overworked, but so are we undergrads. Work is the price of a Yale education, and GESO organizers seemed a bit -- dare I say it? -- ungrateful.

However, much to the relief of my leftist conscience, I have seen the real reasons why grad students feel they need a union, and they are good ones. Some of them are mentioned by this YDN guest columnist, and others were articulated rather movingly by my Anthro TA this morning. A few that seem particularly legitimate to me are:

1. The children of grad students receive no healthcare from the university, putting many of them on welfare programs.

It's true that having kids when you're a student seems kind of dumb. On the other hand, most people don't finish their grad studies until they're 30, by which time many women have had children or are at least thinking about it.

2. After four years, TAs get dramatic stipend cuts.

So the more teaching experience you have, the less you get paid - how counterintuitive is that? Clearly the motivation is purely cost-cutting on the part of the school. And unlike undergrads, grad students aren't expected to finish in four years. For a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Yale, the average completion time is eight or nine.

3. Due to disturbing trends in university hiring practices, it is getting harder and harder for new Ph.D.s to find positions. Fewer full professor positions are available; instead, a university will hire four adjuncts or post-docs for one-year contracts for the price of one professor. These adjuncts work just has hard as any other academic for much cheaper.

To me this is the most resonant point of all. Assuming my life continues on its current trajectory, I will devote the entirety of my youth to grad school, and if I can't get a job when I come out, I will feel cheated. I know that's how many grad students here and at other leading universities feel. To curb this problem, the universities have to commit to education and fairness over sheer economy in their hiring.

You can learn more about GESO's history and goals here, at their website.

Another one of those days
Now Playing: see below
I was bruised and battered
And I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
Saw my reflection in a window
I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away...

I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could hear the blood in my veins
Just as black and whispering as the rain...

Ain't no angel gonna greet me
It's just you and I my friend
And my clothes don't fit me no more
I'd walk a thousand miles just to slip this skin

The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake
I can feel myself fading away
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss
Or will we leave each other alone like this...

-Springsteen

Pain and Pleasure
So many horrible things have happened in Iraq, and this is hardly the worst, but as a woman and a former athlete I was particularly moved by this story from the Times. Such a waste.

On the other hand, the sun is finally shining on New Haven. One almost forgets there's a Restoftheworld out there. People playing frisbee and football and games with no names, people smiling and reading and tanning on the lawns. Everywhere there's grass, there are students: it's like the earthworms coming out onto the sidewalk in the rain. We crawl out of the pale seclusion of our dorms and into the brightness, ready to meet life, only to be greeted with...finals. April is the cruellest month indeed.

Pistof at Kristof
The Times' Nicholas Kristof has just earned his membership in the Club for Democratic Columnists I Don't Like That Much. In his column today, Kristof argues that nuclear energy is the answer to global warming. He couldn't be more wrong.

What Kristof fails to realize is that, its potential as a disasterous safety hazard aside, nuclear energy is neither green nor sustainable. He writes, "Nuclear power, in contrast with other sources, produces no greenhouse gases." No, but producing and fueling nuclear power plants does. The uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, transport and construction that go into producing nuclear power are much more fossil fuel-intensive processes than their counterparts for wind and solar, which offset their construction emissions in the first year of operation.

If Earthlings used nuclear power for 70% of our electricty generation, we would exhaust the estimated uranium supply in 15 years. Then we'd be back at square one, looking for wind power. It makes much more sense to develop truly renewable sources now rather than postponing the moment of truth. Nuclear plants also take 10 years to build. Clearly nuclear power could not grow fast enough to stop climate change.

Kristof's intentions -- protecting our planet from the climate emergency which he rightly stresses the dangers of -- are good. But he should lose his illusions about nuclear power before labeling the environmentalists that oppose it as idealists.

Guess Who's Back...
Mood:  party time!
May I have your attention please...

The blog is back, like the spring leaves, and it's ready to rock. Funny how exactly when I don't have time to do a blog anymore I decide to do it again...woo woo hoo.

So while I've been MIA, lots of stuff has happened on this planet of ours, making it my duty to comment, I suppose.

1. Pope John Paul II:
While there are many issues on which we differed, I admire the late Pope for standing against the death penalty and finally forgiving Galileo, among other things. Regrettably, I've been having some doubts of late about my prospects for being chosen as the next Pope. I mean, I predicted at the last minute I wouldn't get into Davenport housing and TUIB, and frankly, I have the same feeling about the Papacy. But then again, maybe I'm just being the pessimist.

2. More John/Paul:
As in John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz, appointed, resepctively, to the U.N. ambassadorship and the World Bank headship. Um...right. In related news, the YDN recently reported that famously sexist-leaning Harvard prez Laurence Summers would head Yale's Womens Studies Department next year. Of course, it was the April Fools Day issue. And therein lies the difference between Yale and the U.S. government.

3. Terri Schiavo:
This whole debacle was sick. It's over now.

4. Social Security and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:
Sooner or later, these national treasures are going down, thanks to the Bushmen. And I'm not talking about African hunter-gatherers, though I'm sure they're on the hit list too, a little ways down.

5. Iraq:
I think we're still at war. It's hard to tell. Whatever -- war or no war, I'm still for peace.

6. Michellyne:
Honestly, of the final three "Starlet" candidates, she was my least favorite. Pathetic, judges. Her name sounds like tires.

Happy Spring all.

PREPARE FOR THE RESSURECTION!
The blog will return. Stay tuned.

Wheee!
So I spent the entire afternoon and evening at four separate archaeology functions! First, and least exciting, came ceramics lecture. Then we migrated across the street to a gathering hosted by the Anthro department, featuring a talk by my prof from Foundations last semester. He's retiring and has done a lot of amazing things. He mostly discussed his first field season in Iran after grad school, which entailed a number of ridiculous adventures. These included (but were not limited to) attempting to shoot gazelles while starving, staving off siad starvation with a bottle of lime concentrate (!?!?!?), destroying your WWII Jeep's radiator, taking the bus ride from helleating sheeps' feet until your liver gives out, flying through windshields, generally being delerious while not finding the site you're looking for, and finally getting some good work done and inventing (utterly by chance) the flotation method of screening. It was hilarious and almost Indy-quality in nature, and I wanted more than anything to be an archaeologist at that moment.

Then we had our annual undergrad meeting with a few faculty to discuss summer fieldwork options, the requirements for the major, what we would like to chnge about the major, etc. People's senior essays were there for our perusal. I got more and more excited to do all this stuff and go DIGGING! EEEEE! There's actually a special grant you can apply for to get money for work in Latin America, which I could use for one of the Peru programs I've been scoping out. This is on top of the money the department will give you. I like this game!

Finally we had our weekly happy hour in which we sipepd beer and ate leftover pizza and watched Eddie Izzard. "Geoff, God of Biscuits" will forever be our new alias.

Tomorrow I'm going to VT for the Northeast Climate Conference. It will be cold!

KYOTO.

Because it's about time. But what's wrong with this picture?

The blog lives!
It's been over a month since I updated, much to the dismay of my fanbase. But fear not! I and the blog have survived. I will keep it up on some sort of basis from now on. If I can excercise every day, I can surely spew out lovely meaningless sentences (other than the ones that become anthropology papers) as often. So I will. Coincidentally, this my 100th entry!

Happy thoughts abound:

It was sunny and 50 degrees this morning. Spring will come!
Howard Dean has returned! Vindication is awesome.
The Kyoto Protocol is going into effect tomorrow (sans the USA).
My classes are splendiferous. Archaeology rocks my universe.
I am getting Muir Trail fever again.

Goodnight.