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When I was at U of A, there was an adjunct there whom I liked a lot. He was one of my favorite teachers when I was an undergrad and then when I was a grad student I worked with him teaching summer classes. One day in the office after a summer class lecture, he told me that in addition to his teaching load at the uni, he also taught classes at the community college. He was working significantly more than full time just to scrape by enough to cover his basic living costs. All total he made around $19K a year. He received no benefits. At the time, I thought that this was an unusual situation, that it was just because he was ABD and as soon as he finished his dissertation, all would be well for him. It wasn't until much later that I learned that academia hasn't worked that way for a long time.

Confessions of a tenured professor.

Even though there are a few bits of the article that I find questionable, I've linked to it because US higher education is in bad shape and often people who aren't currently employed in US higher education don't realize how bad it is. Here are a few excerpts from the article, not under an LJ cut because this is one of my Causes:

"While instances of dumpster diving are rare, adjunct shopping is typically limited to thrift stores, and decades-old cars sometimes serve as improvised offices when these "roads scholars" are not driving from campus to campus, all in a frantic attempt to cobble together a livable income. Some adjuncts rely on food stamps or selling blood to supplement their poverty-level wages, which have been declining in real terms for decades. At SUNY New Paltz, for instance, adjuncts’ compensation when adjusted for inflation has plummeted 49 percent since 1970, while the president’s salary and those of other top administrators have increased by 35 percent."

Basically, what's happened in academia is the same as what's happened in the work force. The income gap between the top and the bottom has increased and the middle class (ie tenured profs) is shrinking. (These days around three-quarters of all uni instructors are non-tenure track--the migrant workers of academia.) In academia the bottom rung is still doing the same professional labor with the same advanced degrees...they're just not getting paid what their education and experience is worth. Another website describes adjuncts as "the highly educated working poor." The situation for adjuncts is made even worse because often that education came at the cost of thousands of dollars of student loans. So they've got the double whammy of low salary and massive debt.

***

"The exploitation is indeed filthy, but for me and my tenured colleagues, this scandal is neither little nor secret: the vast majority of those well-educated, skilled professionals who daily teach millions of students in our classrooms are actually being paid far less than the workers who nightly clean them. Ad-cons are treated as chattel or as servants who can be dismissed at the will and whim of any administrator from departmental chair to dean or provost. And woe to those ad-cons who elicit the wrath of their campus presidents! They can be non-renewed without any due process whatsoever, simply zapped, either individually or by the hundreds."

And, yes, there are stories of ad-cons getting fired if they try to challenge the status quo of exploitation.

***

"I confess that I must have been overly naïve, but I was utterly dumbfounded when an administrator repeatedly told me that he saw no value whatsoever to the institution in keeping any adjunct instructors more than a couple of years, after which they ought to simply move on and find something else to do. I’m sure my tenured colleagues would find it totally unacceptable if they could be told at the end of any semester that they should simply leave, that there was no value to their accumulated expertise, thank you, because the college wished to hire a fresh young face at a lower salary."

***

(Incidently, women are more likely to be adjuncts and men are more likely to be tenured profs. And almost all upper level university administrators (Presidents, Provosts, and the like) are men. This is not to say that it's purely a gender thing, and there are plenty of men adjuncts, too, but gender is tied up with it.)

This afternoon I was overhearing my Dad (who is a plant ecologist who specializes in desert ecology--specifically Mojave desert) talk to one of his old ecologist friends (another Californian) about the current Mojave desert renewable energy plan problem.

Here's a short article explaining the situation.

The summary of the problem is this: Although solar panels and wind turbines may be good for reducing global warming, the current plan for building them across the Mojave desert is an ecological apocalypse for the region. Hundreds upon hundreds of square miles of wilderness torn apart to set up solar panels and wind turbines.

The thing is, the solution is simple. Leave the wilderness alone and put solar panels on the structures that are already in existence. There's no new ecological damage, and renewable energy is still processed.

Berkeley, in fact, has a system in place to do this that has been working fairly effectively. Basically, the city government gives loans to property owners to put solar panels on the roof of the property. The loan is attached to the property, not the owner, so if the owner sells before the loan is paid off, the loan rolls over to the buyer. (This is so if a person sells the property they won't be saddled with a $15K loan on solar panels from which they are no longer receiving benefit.) The property owner saves money on utilities, the city receives money via a small interest on the loan, and pollution is lessened. Everyone but the electric company benefits. Such a thing done on a national scale would be fairly straight forward and financially self-supporting. That would take care of private buildings, and all new public buildings could be henceforth constructed with solar panels and all old public buildings fitted with them as funds permitted. Coating the greater LA area alone with solar panels could probably power all of Cali and the desert wilderness need not be violated to do it.

The reason why this isn't being done is...*puts on my socialist hat, which, incidentally, is a straw trilby*...capitalism. Solar panels stretched out over the wilderness can be owned by a corporation, and therefore the energy produced can be sold for profit, whereas a web of solar panels on private and public property could not be easily commodified.

(On a different but slightly related topic, my parents and I were musing the other day that one of the problems with Americans is that they seem to conflate democracy and market capitalism. When I'm watching the news, I sometimes want to scream that these things are not the same, nor even necessarily coexistent.)

( Attempting to Re-Draw My Icon (using my tablet)Collapse )

Arty people, how do you draw using a tablet? I'm fairly comfortable coloring with the tablet, but I can't for the life of me draw directly on the tablet. Is there some special trick or mindset that I'm not getting? Or a certain program I should be using but I'm not? (I use Photoshop 7 for all my computer art needs.)

So, in one of limyaael's fantasy rants, eunuchs came up. And, well, you know me and eunuchs. And some people asked for more information. And if there's one topic I can go on and on about, it's eunuchs. Oh, and ancient sexuality is in there, too.

So...

( Here's a quick and dirty rundown of ancient sexuality and eunuchsCollapse )

I feel like this is a paltry summary of a huge topic. (I mean, I could go on for chapters about eunuchs alone!) For more info on ancient sexuality I recommend Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture by Marilyn Skinner. Because she was my thesis advisor. Because it's very newly published and was written to be an undergraduate textbook, so it's up to date and comprehensible. Most of the eunuch info came from my thesis. There does not exist a layman's text on Classical Eunuchs. (Though in my opinion there should.)

Oh, and if I made any errors, feel free to correct me. I've read much more on Roman sexuality than Greek (and as someone in the original post mentioned, Greek sexuality can vary depending on time and place).

Title: Within a Dark Wood
Author: Blackletter
Fandom: Outlander/Lord John and the…
Rating: PG-13 first ending / NC-17 second ending
Summary: The rebel Jamie Fraser is once more at the mercy of the English…and Lord John Grey. Fraser is to be executed at dawn, but Grey can’t bear to see his friend hang without speaking to him one last time. Fraser hopes not to be hanged at all.
Disclaimer: Diana Gabaldon owns Jamie Fraser and Lord John Grey (though I wouldn’t mind owning Lord John). She doesn’t own the American Revolutionary War. In any event, I am not she, and I make no money off of this.
Warning: SLASH. There are two endings. The first is the more canon-likely ending and includes bits of slashiness but ultimately, nothing greatly beyond what we’ve seen in canon. The second ending is the less-canonical and includes major SLASH of the Jamie/John variety. So if you don’t like smut, don’t like slash, or don’t like that pairing, stop after the first ending.
Note: Clair Fraser was not harmed, killed, or bashed in the making of this story.
Note 2: This story was inspired by Dira Sudis’ unfulfilled Yuletide 2004 request for Lord John and the Private Matter fanfic with the instructions: “Get him laid. Please.” I hope this satisfies.

( Enough with the gianormous header. Here's the story.Collapse )

Suggestions are, as always, most welcome. (Especially since this fic wasn't beta-read.)

Monday I teach. For the first time. Ever. I will stand up in front of 30 students and pretend that I know what I'm doing (even though the only training or advice I've had on teaching is "Don't worry; you'll figure it out.") The Oxford Latin Course Book is weird. It has goofy pictures. It doesn't have grammer tables to memorize. I don't know what to do with it.

I'm terrified out of my bloody mind.

Just so this post isn't completely whining and useless, here's some art.

( I Covet This Man's CoatCollapse )