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 fellow enraged citizens and encouraged them to pass it on to hip students. The writers at Rolling Stone have this great sarcastic pissed-off tone that they use (or at least some, Matt Taibi is great) that always seems to accurately fit my own mood and musings when it comes to this administration. Like this little nugget....
"This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profiteering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole."
Now I think I would like to write my dissertation in this tone but I'm not sure my committee would go for it. Check out the entire article after the jump for further outrage....
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle
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 fellow enraged citizens and encouraged them to pass it on to hip students. The writers at Rolling Stone have this great sarcastic pissed-off tone that they use (or at least some, Matt Taibi is great) that always seems to accurately fit my own mood and musings when it comes to this administration. Like this little nugget....
"This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profiteering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole."
Now I think I would like to write my dissertation in this tone but I'm not sure my committee would go for it. Check out the entire article after the jump for further outrage....
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle