I have, to my surprise it seems, managed to not only pass my comprehensive exams but also successfully defended my dissertation proposal. What this means to me is that I am now a Ph.D. candidate, what this means to those outside academia is absolutely nothing. Despite this I am still encouraged and now take this encouragement to Oaxaca, September 7th, to carry out the research I so boldly proposed. Intimidating? Yes. Unachievable? We shall see. I'm most excited to begin blogging again regularly, though I fear my adventures this second time around in Oaxaca will be a bit less exciting than my first experience during the tumultous summer of 2006. Despite the fact that initial blogging may be sporadic and pedestrian at best, and an exercise in total boredom at worst, I'm looking forward to this electronic method of communication. So, in a totally unrelated post, I ran across this awesome article in Rolling Stone magazine about the private contractor mess in Iraq and sent it to my ...